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REPORT 



ON 



The Diplomatic Archives of the Department 
OF State, 1789-1840 



PAPERS OF BUREAU OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH, CARNEGIE 
INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON, 

ANDREW C. McLaughlin, Director 




WASHINGTON, D.C.: 

Published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington 
1904 



REPORT 



ON 



The Diplomatic Archives of the Department 
OF State, 1789-1840 




PAPERS OF BUREAU OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH, CARNEGIE 
INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON, 

ANDREW C. McLaughlin, Director 




WASHINGTON, D. C. : 

Published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington 
1904 






CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON 
Publication No. 22 

Gift 
Author 
7 ?^r*Ob 



\ 



PRESS OF 

THE HENRY E. WILKENS PRINTING CO. 

WASHINGTON, 0. C. 



The Diplomatic Archives of the Department 
OF State, 1789-1840. 



By Andrew C. McLaughlin. 



In 183 1 Congress authorized the publication of " Congressional 
Documents " for the first thirteen Congresses, a work proposed by the 
printers Gales and Seaton. The materials were to be selected under 
the direction of the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House 
of Representatives. At a later session, March 2, 1833, Congress author- 
ized the publication of documents down to the end of the Twenty- 
second Congress. Tihe result of these resolutions was the printing of 
the series of folio volumes commonly called American State Papers, 
and more fully entitled Documents, Legislative and Executive, of the 
Congress of the United States, from the First Session of the First Con- 
gress to the Second Session of the Twenty-second Congress, a series of 
great value, which has been of incalculable service to all American his- 
torians and to all persons interested in the history of the United States. 
Only a limited edition was printed, and the set is now not easily obtained. 
The full set consists of thirty-eight volumes, covering ten different 
classes of subjects, but we are interested here chiefly in the series of 
six volumes on Foreign Relations. These contain the important mes- 
sages of the Presidents from 1789 to 1828, some reports of committees, 
and like material, but chiefly diplomatic correspondence; they were 
made up largely from the documents sent to the Senate, from which 
the Senate had removed the injunction of secrecy, amplified somewhat, 
though apparently very little, by documents in the files of the Depart- 
ment of State which had not been before the Senate. One of the pur- 
poses of the study on which I have based this paper was to discover to 
what extent the idiplomatic correspondence was printed in this series of 
Foreign Relations, and the extent, character, and value of the un- 
printed material. It will be remembered that from 1828 to i860 such 
diplomatic correspondence as is printed is to be found in the ordinary 
series of Congressional documents, generally in the Executive docu- 

(3) 



4 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

ments of the respective Congresses, but not infrequently in other places. 
Any one wiho has sought information of this character in the Con- 
gressional series from 1828 to i860 knows how puzzling the task is, 
and especially that, except in a few favored localities, the sets of volumes 
are not sufficiently complete for a thorough and satisfactory examina- 
tion. Most of us have probably had the pleasure of finding that the 
particular volume we desired to use was, by the irony of fate, missing 
from the set to which we had access. 

An examination of the archives of the State Department seems to 
show conclusively (i) the need of printing in extenso the diplomatic 
correspondence for the period covered by the State Papers, Foreign 
Relations (1789-1828), because of the incompleteness of these volumes, 
as will be particularly illustrated in the following pages of this report ; 
(2) the need of printing the materials from 1828 to i860 as fully as 
the policy and desire of the State Department permit, because of the 
abundance of interesting material 'hitherto entirely unprinted and be- 
cause the documents at one time printed in the Congressional series are 
now largely inaccessible for the average reader, student, or scholar, 
and of course altogether out of print. 

An examination of the extent of the material in the Bureau of 
Indexes and Archives has been made, and this not by looking at the 
outside of the bound volumes, but by turning over the letters page by 
page. Any one who has tried the task of estimating the length of a 
manuscript knows how difficult it is to be exact, but in this case it is 
fair to say, as a result of the examination and of checking over the 
materials in certain periods, that not more than one-fourth of the 
material has been printed in the State Papers. The despatches and 
instructions omitted are often of extreme interest. In preparing the 
following pages, I 'have not, as a rule, tried to 'determine whether cer- 
tain manuscript papers are printed in the writings of distinguished 
statesmen. Some of these papers are found in such volumes as the 
Writings of Jefferson, and those of Jay, Madison, and Monroe ; but the 
number printed is, comparatively, very small, and they appear generally 
in limited and expensive editions, which find no place on the shelves of 
the great mass of students and readers of American history. 

T'he materials printed in the State Papers very often appear only 
in extract. It is unnecessary to say that, so far as their importance for 
diplomatic 'history is concerned, the omitted portions are often not the 
least interesting. Take, for example, a list of papers communicated to 
the House of Representatives February 5, 1824 {American State Papers, 
Vol. V, 282). I take this example quite at random and have not 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 5 

searched for the most striking. Fifty papers in all were thus com- 
municated. Of these, twenty-two are but extracts of the full despatches 
or instructions. 

Tihe diplomatic archives of the State Department are now con- 
tained in two bureaus, the Bureau of Rolls and Library and the Bureau 
of Indexes and Archives. In the former were contained until recently 
the papers of the Continental Congress ; these papers were, by a recent 
executive order, transferred to the Library of Congress, but the order 
ex:pressly authorized the bureau to retain such papers " as in the 
discretion of the Secretary of State may be required for the continuity 
and completeness of the records and archives of the Department of 
State." There are still, therefore, in the Bureau of Rolls and Library 
the despatches, instructions, and other diplomatic papers that were 
originally part of the so-called papers of the Continental Congress, and 
they cover the years from the outbreak of the Revolution to the organ- 
ization of the government. 

It is not my intention in this paper to consider the correspondence 
before 1789. It is well known that Wharton, in the Diplomatic Cor- 
respondence of the American Revolution, printed a very satisfactory 
edition of the papers as far down as November, 1784. The set of Diplo- 
matic Correspondence, iy8^-iy8g, in seven volumes, covers the period 
indicated by the title, and, though one may hazard the guess that the 
correspondence of that time is not fully printed, it is not necessary to 
consider that material here. Nothing of importance need be said about 
the archives in the Bureau of Rolls and Library that belong to the 
period after the establishment of the government under the Constitu- 
tion. It is sufficient to say that there is in that bureau one volume of 
fair copies of notes from the Department and instructions from October, 
1788, to December, 1792. This includes the later correspondence of 
Jay, who did not immediately drop the duties of the office of foreign 
affairs on the establishment of the new government, and also some of 
Jefferson's correspondence. Attention might also be called to material 
that is not strictly classed as diplomatic; for example, the correspond- 
ence of Governor Claiborne, who was sent in 1803 to take possession 
of New Orleans after the cession of Louisiana. This material is full 
of interesting information concerning the southern frontier and the 
relations with the Spaniards. But this Claiborne material is not strictly 
within the purview of this report. 

Our concern in this paper is chiefly with the strictly diplomatic 
correspondence to be found on file in the Bureau of Indexes and 
Archives, under the charge of Mr. Pendleton King, the chief of the 



6 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

bureau, to whose kindness and courtesy and permission to examine 
the manuscripts in his charge the thanks of the compiler of this 
pamphlet are due. The diplomatic correspondence of the State Depart- 
ment naturally falls into four divisions : (i) Despatches, which include 
all letters to the Department from our representatives to foreign coun- 
tries, with which may be classed all inclosures, such as notes sent by 
ministers of foreign states to our representatives in those states, and 
other material bearing on foreign conditions; (2) Notes to the Depart- 
ment from foreign legations in this country; (3) Instructions, whicih 
include all letters from the Department to our representatives abroad ; 
and (4) Notes from the Department to foreign legations in this coun- 
try, the word " notes " being used to include all communications. For 
the purposes of a complete analysis one might naturally include the 
Consular Despatches and Consular Instructions, and the " Domestic 
Letters," but none of these sets contains much diplomatic material. 
Some of the Domestic Letters, which are the correspondence on all 
sorts of subjects with individuals Iholding no diplomatic position, are 
doubtless of diplomatic concern, and moreover it should be especially 
noted that some of the earlier correspondence of the government which 
would now be classified otherwise is filed and labeled as " Domestic 
Letters; " all the notes from the Department, down to 1804, appear in 
fair copies in the series of volumes entitled " Domestic Letters." With 
the exception of these notes, the papers discussed in the following pages 
are included in the four subdivisions given above. 

The volumes of diplomatic papers in the Bureau of Indexes and 
Archives are listed in an inventory-book, in which new volumes are 
entered when bound. This inventory gives the numbers on the manu- 
script volumes, showing which volumes are duplicates of others; it 
also gives the dates of beginning and ending of the volumes, but in 
many cases, especially in despatches, these dates are not early enough 
or late enoug^h, as the case may be. The reason for this discrepancy in 
dates is usually the fact that the letters written before the minister or 
agent reached bis post, and those written after leaving it, are not in- 
cluded in the dates given. In some cases at the end of a volume are 
found letters written by a former diplomatic officer many years after 
the termination of his mission. Besides the list of volumes of Des- 
patches, Notes to the Department, Instructions, and Notes from the 
Department, this inventory contains lists of volumes of Circulars, of 
Consular Instructions and Consular Despatches, and of volumes per- 
taining to Consular Clerks, Foreign Consuls in the United States, and 
Special Agents. 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 7 

By the help of this inventory, volumes can usually he located 
readily. The system of arrangement of books is comparatively simple, 
and in almost all the books the manuscripts are bound in chronological 
order, the most noteworthy exception being that inclosures are bound 
after the letter in which they were inclosed, though naturally preceding 
it in date. The records are, on the whole, in excellent condition, thoug'h 
some of the older papers are considerably discolored, or are brittle and 
breaking at the edges, thus making the reading of them difficult for 
the investigator. The handwriting of many of the earlier papers is 
hard to decipher, even when the ink has not faded. Some of the press 
copies are at present almost illegible. 

The arrangement in earlier years is in some ways perplexing, and 
sometimes important documents are not to be fotmd. It is no unusual 
thing to find that despatches of certain numbers are not in the archives, 
and this in spite of the fact that sometimes as high as five copies of one 
paper were sent by as many different ships. It is interesting to note 
how many copies of the original number were received and to compare 
the dates of sending and of receipt. About 183 1 a definite system was 
adopted. The records since that time are well arranged, and the sys- 
tem is easily understood; the records since 1831 are also more nearly 
complete, due to a great extent to improvements in navigation, but due 
also to careful supervision. Duplicates no longer appear, and on the 
other hand there are no despatches missing, as is the case in the earlier 
volumes. Evidently about that time our ministers ceased to send 
duplicate and triplicate despatches, while the Department made arrange- 
ments to get copies of documents that for any reason went astray. 

The earlier documents are at times somewhat hard to use, the 
requirement of uniform size in paper being a later development. Be- 
sides the manuscripts, one occasionally finds in these volumes printed 
material, such as pamphlets, invitations, instructions for court dress at 
times of mourning, and copies of papers or broadsides of the time. 
Practically all of these are without mention in the State Papers, but are 
interesting to the historian and often almost impossible to obtain else- 
where in this country. 

The following description and analysis of the various series may 
be of service : 

(i) From the beginning of the government (1789), despatches 
from United States ministers abroad have been classified in separate 
series for the different countries, but occasionally the despatches of a 
minister who went to two countries are found in one volume, which 
thus really belongs in two series. This fact is often a source of per- 



8 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

plexity to the investig-ator. An understanding of this method of 'bind- 
ing will often explain the apparent absence of material in some series. 

(2) Notes to the Department from foreign legations in the United 
States 'have from the first been bound in separate volumes for different 
countries. There is one volume of Notes to the Department which 
contains miscellaneous letters, such as those from special missions to 
the United States. 

(3) The first thirteen volumes of Instructions, covering from 
January 23, 1791, to March 8, 1833, contain instructions to ministers 
everywhere. Volumes 14, 15, and 16 (April 2, 1829, to January 14, 
1865), are classed as American States. Since January 14, 1865, all 
instructions have been copied in separate series for each country. The 
list of dates for the beginning of separate series for each country shows, 
as I ihave already said, that eacfh was given a separate series of instruc- 
tions according to the importance of its diplomatic relations with us. 

(4) Notes from the Department to foreign legations in the United 
States, as I have already said, were at first bound with Domestic Let- 
ters, which at that time included all letters to persons not in govern- 
ment employ. Beginning January 19, 1804, a separate series of Notes 
to the Department was begun. Of this series the first volume, dating 
from January 19, 1804, to January 25, 1810, and containing 301 sepa- 
rate letters, has long been missing, and only an index to it remains to 
s'how its contents. It may not be impossible by one method or another 
to restore large portions of this lost volume. 

Up to 1840 the papers are contained in 366 volumes, not including 
duplicate volumes. Until that time only 25 countries have separate 
series. Many of the duplicate papers are bound in separate volumes ; 
in other cases duplicates are bound in the same book with the originals. 
A number of the duplicate volumes bave been checked with their orig- 
inals, and in every case materials bave been found in the duplicate 
books that did not appear in the books of originals. In some cases 
these materials are comments by the secretary on despatches received ; 
in other cases they are inclosures that did not seem suitable for binding 
with the special papers on the subject ; in a few cases at the end of a 
duplicate despatch appears a postscript not added to the original, evi- 
dently appended because the duplicate despatch was copied and sent 
by a later ship than the original. These dififerences 'have indicated the 
necessity for examination of all duplicate books, in order that no 
material may 'be missed. 

The following table may be of service in indicating the amount 
of material, before 1840, under each country. 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 



Volumes of Diplomatic Papers before 1846, Bureau of Indexes and Archives, 

Departtnent of State. 



Names of series and num- 
ber of volumes in each 
to 1840 



Unclassified, 21 

Argentine Republic 7 

Austria 3 

Barbary Powers 1 

Belgium 4 

Brazil 17 

Central America 2 

Chile 8 

Colombia 13 

Denmark 7 

Ecuador I 

France 46 

Germany 7 

Great Britam 67 

Italy 6 

Mexico 15 

Netherlands 21 

Paraguay and Uruguay 1 

Peru 6 

Portugal 19 

Russia 19 

Spain 46 

Sweden and Norway- ■ 1 1 

Texas 4 

Turkey 10 

Venezuela 4 

Total. 366 



Despatches 



Begin 



Apr. 26, 
1817 

June 6, 
1837 



Aug. 20, 
1819 

Apr. 3, 
1809 



Oct. 15. 

1818 
Mar. 14. 

1820 
Feb. 22. 

1811 



Sept. 30, 

1789 
Oct. 22, 

1800 
Nov. 29. 

1791 
Nov. 7. 

1831 
Apr. 29, 

1809 
Aug. 15, 

1792 



Mar. 20, 

1826 
July 31, 

1790 
Sept. 20, 

1808 
Oct. 14, 

1790 
Aug. 21, 

1812 
July 18, 

1836 
June 1, 

1817 

Mar. 24, 

1835 



Vols 



13 



34 
3 

46 
I 
9 

17 



5 
14 
13 
34 
6 
I 
9 



Notes to 
Department 



Begin 



Oct. 15, 
1794 

Dec. 9. 
1818 

Nov. 8. 
1820 



Jan. 3, 
1832 

Apr. 5, 
1824 



Feb. 19. 

1828 
Apr. 8. 

1820 
Dec. 10. 

1802 
Oct. 21. 

1839 
Mar. 18. 

1801 
Apr. 3. 

1816 
Sept. 2. 

1791 
July 19, 

1826 
Mar. 1. 

1816 
Aug. 17. 

1799 



May 8, 

1816 
Jan. 16. 

1801 
Aug. 22, 

1794 
Mar. 25. 

1793 
Mar. 2, 

1836 



Feb. 24, 
1835 



Vols. 



I 

2 
2 
I 

10 
2 

19 
2 
4 
2 



3 
4 
10 
3 
1 



Instructions 



Jan. 23, 
1791 



June 7, 

1837 
July 1. 

1834 
Apr. 14, 

1832 
May 29, 

1833 
May 15, 

1824 
May 29, 

1833 

May 29, 

1833 

Mar. 28, 

1833 



July 20, 

1829 
Apr. 20, 

1835 
July 20, 

1829 
May 2, 

1838 
May 29. 

1833 
Jan. 29. 

1833 



May 29. 
1833 

Apr. 18. 

1833 
Jan. 2. 

1833 
Mar. 12. 

1833 
May 31, 

1834 
May 21, 

1837 
Dec. 20, 

1820 
Mar. 18, 

1835 



Vols. 



15 



Notes from 
Department 



Begin 



May 5, 

1810 

Sept. 28, 

1838 



July 1. 

1834 
Oct. 22, 

1834 



Nov. 6, 

1834 

May 18, 

1835 

Julyl. 
1834 



July 1. 

1834 
July 1. 

1834 
July I. 

1834 
Aug. 2, 

1834 
Julyl. 

1834 
July 1, 

1834 
July 7, 

1834 



July 1, 

1834 
Julyl. 

1834 
Julyl. 

1834 
July 1. 

1834 
July 11. 

1836 



July 7. 
1834 



Vo 



lO DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

The most puzzling difficulty in the use of the material is in locating 
the earliest material under each country. If one goes to volume i of 
any series he can not he sure that he has found the earliest papers from 
that country. In the case of Instructions and Notes from the Depart- 
ment, the first volume will be found numbered one only under countries 
with which diplomatic relations were entered upon comparatively late ; 
for example, Austria Instructions begin with volume i, June 7, 1837, 
while Barbary Powers Instructions begin with volume 14, July i, 1834. 
The reason for this is that the first instructions to Barbary Powers are 
found in the first thirteen volumes of unclassified instructions. The 
correspondence for any one country began to be segregated and bound 
in a separate series as the relations with the country developed and its 
importance increased. This fact is indicated by the dates at which 
the separate series begin, as shown in the table on p. 9. The number of 
the first volume of Instructions or Notes from the Department in the 
separate series for any country follows the number of the last volume 
of unclassified Instructions or Notes from the Department in which 
similar papers for the same country appear. 

For the purpose of discovering the character and value of the 
archives, I have made a special examination of certain periods and of 
the despatches of certain persons, and have made a careful comparison 
between the amount of the unpublished matter and the amount of 
printed matter. The result of this examination can not be put accu- 
rately in a few words, nor can reference be made to all the important 
fields where significant correspondence is unprinted, but the general 
statements that follow will serve as illustrations and as an indication 
of the value of the unprinted materials. 

The State Papers contain very full correspondence in the early 
years of the government from Gouverneur Morris, who was appointed 
in 1789 as agent of the government to ascertain the "sentiments and 
intentions of the court at London" concerning the fulfilment of the 
treaty of peace and the formation of a treaty of commerce. Morris 
afterward went to France, and, as is well known, his letters from the 
continent are full of valuable information. Monroe's despatches during 
his stay as minister in France are also given at considerable length. 
The same is true of the correspondence concerning the formation of 
Jay's treaty.* But during these important years we have other sources 



*Among the unprinted papers on this subject is a significant letter from Jay, 
September 13, 1794, speaking of the work of Monroe in Paris, and intimating 
tnat the activity of that unseasoned diplomat was increasing the difficulties of 
the English mission. (See No. V, below.) 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. II 

of information concerning European and American conditions which 
have not seen the Hght. This is true of the despatches of Thomas 
Pinckney, who was sent to Great Britain as the first minister after the 
establishment of the new government. His experiences were far from 
being unimportant or lacking in interest. They were scarcely less try- 
ing, though not quite so dramatic as the experiences of John Adams, 
wiho, soon after the war, went to London, with the hope of making a 
treaty of commerce and settling the difficulties that had already arisen 
in connection with the treaty of 1783. Pinckney was not so good or 
so profuse a letter-writer as Adams, but his despatches well repay read- 
ing. In the State Papers there are some fifteen letters from Pinckney, 
written during 'his residence in London and before the beginning of his 
Spanish mission ; in the archives of the Department are found two 
hundred and seventy letters, including letters from his secretary and 
inclosures in the way of notes and other papers. Some of these are 
not important, but others are of conspicuous interest. 

Again, the despatches covering the X. Y. Z. correspondence are 
pretty fully printed, as are the despatches of William Vans Murray 
from The Hague, and the negotiations preceding the close of the diffi- 
culty with France by the treaty of 1800. There are some subjects of 
this kind concerning which we have practically full information, but 
it must be said that as a rule in almost every period of particular in- 
terest new materials can be found in the archives, and some of this 
material is of the greatest value. Even on the most salient episodes in 
our history, the diplomatic records are not printed in full, and some- 
times there are considerable bodies of valuable material as yet un- 
published. When we remember liow much of our national history 
turned upon foreign relations from the establishment of the govern- 
ment to the end of the War of 1812, we see at once the desirability 
of having at hand every scrap of evidence for understanding those 
critical twenty-five years during which America was harassed on every 
side — ^by France and England on the ocean, by the combatants on the 
European continent, by the Spanish on the frontier, and by the In- 
dians, who, rightly or wrongly, we believed to be influenced much of 
the time by the emissaries of Europe. And yet even during that period 
much of the most important material remains imprinted in the archives 
of the Department of State. 

No episode in our history is of greater significance than the Louis- 
iana purchase, but this, of course, was only the outcome of years of 
important events — indeed, one might more properly call the purchase 
an incident, though an important one, in the southwestern question, 



12 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

which, of course, did not end with 1803, but continued in one form or 
another till the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (1848). For the study 
of this question we have insufficient material in the published papers. 
The history of the question from the outbreak of the Revolution to the 
beginning of 1787 is fairly well understood. It is ably and properly 
discussed in various places, and forms a portion of almost every book 
covering the period. It is not unlikely that a study of the Spanish 
archives, and a pu'blication of the Gardoqui correspondence, copies of 
which are, I believe, in this country, would give us new information on 
this whole field. But at any rate the treatment of the Mississippi ques- 
tion, down to the time when the attempt at forming a treaty was aban- 
doned by Jay in 1787, is understood and receives intelligent and ade- 
quate treatment in our general histories. Part of the reason for this 
is that the diplomatic correspondence for that time is in print in the 
seven volumes entitled The Diplomatic Correspondence, 1/8^-1789 (re- 
printed in three volumes in 1837) . 

But for the period from 1789 to 1803 by no means all the material 
in the State Department archives illustrating our relations with France 
and Spain is in print. Unfortunately for our knowledge of conditions 
in Spain, until William Short went there in December, 1792,* we are 
dependent for some years on the information supplied by William 
Carmichael, who was strangely uncommunicative. His despatches to 
the government were so infrequent that one is at a loss to understand 
why he was retained so long in the public service. On such a question 
we can get no lig'ht from any private or semi-public correspondence 
which we might hope to find outside of the Department, for all of 
Carmichael's papers seem to have disappeared. Though he long held 
important diplomatic positions, the despatches from him in the archives 
are very few in number. Jefferson seemed to believe that Carmichael's 
letters were surreptitiously disposed of in transit, but it is doubtful 
whether Carmichael wrote except with amazing infrequency. On April 
II, 1791, Jefferson, writing from Philadelphia, acknowledged a letter 
of January 24, 1791, which, he said, was the first received from Car- 
michael since the receipt of one dated May 6, 1789. Between March, 
1785, and April, 1791, Carmichael was sent eighteen instructions, and 
in answer to these Carmichael sent two despatches, one March 14, 1786, 
and one December 6, 1786. Carmichael died in Spain February 9, 1795. 

Fortunately Short was a good letter-writer, and from the time he 
went to Madrid until Pinckney appeared on the scene, with the purpose 

*These despatches are found in a volume entitled " W. Short, The Hague 
and Spain, 1792-1795." 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 1 3 

of bringing the elusive court of Spain to the formal acknowledgment 
of our southern boundary, we get very full and apparently accurate 
information as to the conditions in that country and its attitude toward 
the problem of making a treaty. His correspondence is full of interest, 
for it contains information concerning not only the main issue between 
Spain and America, but concerning the course of hostilities in Europe 
and the movements in European politics and diplomacy. Practically 
nothing of Short's correspondence is printed ; it forms, at least, a neces- 
sary preface to Pinckney's despatches, and shows how hard it was to 
get Spain to come to the point of discussing the situation seriously so 
long as procrastination seemed to aid rather than to imperil her cause. 
It will be remembered that Pinckney finally brought the Prince of 
Peace to terms by demanding his passports and making ostensible, if 
not real, preparations for leaving the country. In Short's despatches 
from Spain during those critical years there are 140,000 Words ; that 
is to say, a whole printed book, almost as large as one of the volumes 
of McMaster's History of the People of the United States, and I think 
I am right in saying that this material is practically unknown to Ameri- 
can or foreign historical investigators. 

When the every-day American was entirely dependent for informa- 
tion as to European affairs on the knowledge he could gather from the 
meager columns of the newspapers before the use of steamships or the 
invention of the telegraph, any first-hand information was, no doubt, 
welcomed with joy. The isolation of America is brought out with 
startling distinctness by the study of these papers. The ministers of 
the United States in foreign countries were dependent on their own 
resources, their own judgment, and their knowledge of the situation. 
Their instructions could not instruct them in reality, except in the most 
general way, and often they would not hear from the government of 
the United States for months.* 

The foreign ministers sent information as to political and some- 
times as to social conditions in Europe — ^^budgets of news that must 
have been eagerly read by the officials to whom they were addressed 
and doubtless by others also. Many of these letters are of marked 
value, and probably all students of European history would be much 
interested in the accounts given by these spectators of what was happen- 
ing on the continent, Certaiinly their comments would be quite as well 



*Thi3 again is well illustrated by the embarrassing experience of Short, w'lo 
was informed of Pinckney's appointment to Madrid, and then was left for months 
without one word of information as to when Pinckney was to come to take 
charge of the negotiations. 



14 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

worth reading as are the letters and reminiscences of most foreign 
diplomats, which are sometimes printed and often used by the student 
and reader of European history. As to the real historical trust- 
worthiness of these letters, one can not speak with assurance. The 
ministers felt quite at liberty to give gossip and send rumor, though 
they often, if not invariably, distinguished mere rumor from the facts 
that they gathered from the public gazettes or from conversation and 
observation. No student of history would dare to pass on the avail- 
ability and credibility of letters of this kind until after testing them 
pretty thoroughly; each letter would naturally need examination in 
connection with the facts discussed. Of all the letters examined describ- 
ing European conditions and movements, perhaps the most striking are 
those of William S'hort, John Quincy Adams, Jonathan Russell, and 
Benjamin Rush. But I do not pretend to pass on them all or to say 
that there are not many other ministers whose communications contain 
material quite as valuable for the illumination of European history and 
of the fluctuating stages of diplomacy. 

The volume of letters sent by William Short from Paris from 
September, 1789, to November, 1790, is full of interest for all students 
of the French Revolution (see Nos. I-IV, below). The letters are 
well written and are evidently the work of a thoughtful man who was 
deeply interested in the course of the Revolution, and kept careful 
watch of its progress. Here, as elsewhere, it is necessary, of course, to 
distinguish between actual fact and the reports that the ministers trans- 
mitted to Congress, but bis descriptions of debates in the National 
Assembly, his accounts of scenes in the streets of Paris, his tracing of 
the rise and fall of popular enthusiasm, can scarcely be far from right. 
We get from these letters a vivid narrative of the course of the Revolu- 
tion for thirteen critical months. In addition there is constant refer- 
ence to the commercial relations between France and America, to the 
American prisoners in Algiers, to the threatened war between Spain 
and England over the Nootka Sound trouble, to the conditions in the 
Netherlands and Belgium, to the conduct of Lafayette and Mirabeau, 
to the apparent popularity or unpopularity of the leading characters, 
to the constantly varying opinions and passions of the people, to the 
purposes and the behavior of the king and queen, and to the sufferings 
of the emigres. The second volume of Short's letters from Paris begins 
March 30, 1791, and ends in August, 1792. It is full of entertaining 
information. His descriptions are, no doubt, once again based in part 
on rumor, but he evidently was an eye-witness of much, and he had 
the faculty of recounting in a most entertaining fashion the events 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. I5 

which attracted ihis attention and which 'he thoug'ht would interest the 
American government. 

Any one that has ever read a letter from the pen of John Quincy 
Adams will be prepared to hear that his European despatches are full, 
graphic, keen, and entertaining. First, we have two volumes of un- 
printed despatches written by Adams while he was minister to the 
Netherlands, running from July, 1794, to April, 1798. Among these 
is to be found ihis report on a mission to London in 1795. There is 
next a little volume of letters written from Berlin during the latter part 
of 1800 and the early months of 1801 (October to June). This volume 
contains eighteen interesting letters on the European situation of the 
time, and I presume it may be safely conjectured that the student of the 
Napoleonic period will not find these despatches dull. It is certainly 
interesting to the average reader to see the events of the day through 
the eyes of such a keen observer. The succession of events in Europe 
and the general industrial and military situation were naturally of con- 
siderable moment to the Americans of 1800 ; the students of American 
history are necessarily interested in knowing not only w'hat was taking 
place abroad, but also the supposed facts, strategic purposes, and diplo- 
matic probabilities disclosed by the despatches of our foreign repre- 
sentatives, constituting the knowledge on which our government could 
form its own judgments. Below will be found one of the letters from 
Berlin (No. VI). I have chosen it because it shows so well the inter- 
ests of the United States in the European struggle. 

Of greater interest are the despatches of John Quincy Adams from 
St. Petersburg, Paris, and Ghent. It will be remembered that Adams 
went to Russia as minister in 1809, and that he did not return until 
after peace was framed. There are three volumes of his despatches 
filed with Russian despatches, though a portion of the letteis were writ- 
ten from Paris and a good many from Ghent. In the first volume we 
find 122 letters, practically all unprinted, and in the second volume 167 
letters, largely unprinted. The third also contains much unpublished 
material of interest; it is taken up with the work of the joint commis- 
sioners in St. Petersburg. The letters, written with regularity, describe 
with care every move in the great diplomatic and martial game that 
was playing to a finish in Europe. The condition of Russia, the opin- 
ions of Austria's plans and purposes, the character and ambitions of 
Napoleon, the formation of the new combinations to check his vic- 
torious career, the effect of the disastrous retreat from Moscow, are 
here told in long and able letters, written with Hterary skill and with 
the freedom and abandon one might expect from the younger Adams. 



1 6 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

We get, in fact, from this correspondence a vivid contemporary history 
of five years of the Napoleonic wars, a history at times based on sur- 
mise and conjecture, it is true, but bringing the situation before us 
with remarkable distinctness. Any one of these letters might be selected 
and printed in this pamphlet as an illustration of the kind of historical 
material that lies concealed in these archives, but I have chosen the 
one commenting on the retreat of Napoleon from Moscow (No. VII). 

Adams had the task in hand of discussing with the court of Russia 
the reasons for Ainerica's entering the war and was also later con- 
cerned with the proposition of Russian mediation. The reports of his 
interviews have therefore evident value in American diplomatic history. 
We should naturally be more surprised, however, to find that not even 
all the American materials for a study of the treaty of Ghent are at 
hand in print. It is hard to see how any set of despatches could touch 
us more closely than the series sent by Adams during the dreary wait- 
ing at Ghent (see Nos. VIII-X, below). Perhaps we can see by 
reading these why the United States was willing to accept a peace that 
did not essentially settle the objects of the war, and why the com- 
missioners were ready to close 'hostilities by signing sudh a treaty. By 
studying such despatches as these of Adams we get an idea of the per- 
sistent fight England made against Napoleon's power, of the continuing 
interest of the United States, of how England finally brought America 
to a stage of exasperation and desperation, and of the position of tre- 
mendous importance that England occupied after the first overthrow of 
Napoleon. 

It may seem a strange assertion that we have nowhere in print the 
most necessary despatches for an understanding of the events imme- 
diately preceding the War of 1812. These despatches were seemingly 
used by Henry Adams in preparing his History of the United States', 
for he makes reference to a few of them. Many of the most interesting 
are, however, not in print, either in Adams's history or in the State 
Papers. And yet any one wishing to see vividly the causes of the war 
must turn to these papers. They bring sharply before us the com- 
plexities of the situation, and give us a new view of the intricate diplo- 
macy of those perplexing days, when America was trying hard to 
believe that Napoleon had withdrawn his vexatious decrees, when Eng- 
land, feeling the force of the non-intercourse acts, was evidently trying 
to be as fair as a consuming hatred of France and a distrust of Napoleon 
would allow, and when the emperor of the French was willing to make 
bland promises to our ministers if he could entangle England in new 
difficulties. The despatches of Jonathan Russell from France, January 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 1 7 

4, 1810, to October 29, 181 1, give a great deal of information about 
Napoleon's relations to American commerce (see No. XI, below), 
while the pubHshed letters deal only with attempts to discover viola- 
tions of the decree revoking the Berlin and Milan decrees. Not being 
willing to declare openly his disbelief in Napoleon's assurances, Russell 
still shows by his despatches strong evidences of doubt. His despatches 
of November 17, 1810, December 4, 1810, March 15 and March 25, 
181 1, are in this matter especially illuminating. Noteworthy also are 
Russell's repeated protests regarding treatment of American ships and 
•seamen (March 4 and following), and the frequency with which he 
wrote on the copies of his notes to the French minister the telling 
words " not answered." 

Russell's discussions with Castlereagh before the announcement 
in England that war had begun are of marked interest ; some are not 
printed at all ; of others only extracts are printed. The letters of Joel 
Barlow from Paris at the critical juncture of affairs, September 29, 
181 1, to November 23, 1812, are rather fully published, though some 
interesting ones have been omitted. In the State Papers (III, 405-434) 
wJll be found the despatches submitted to Congress from November 5, 
181 1, to Novem'ber 4, 1812, referring to the relations between England 
and the United States. Many of these are not printed in full. An ex- 
ceedingly interesting example of the way the material is used in the old 
State Papers appears in the documents that follow (see Nos. XII, XIII, 
below). A good illustration and not an extreme instance is the des- 
patch of March 20, 1812. It covers over eight pages of foolscap paper, 
and contains much valuable information ; but from this letter there 
appears in the State Papers (III, 427) only, " I had the honor to ad- 
dress you on the 4th instant, giving a brief account of the debate in 
the House of Commons on the preceding evening. Since then, no 
change in relation to us has taken place here." Of course, Russell all 
through these days was a false reader of poHtical signs, perhaps blinded 
for a time with prejudice, for, as we know, the ministry really were 
preparing to withdraw the obnoxious orders in council. 

The materials on the recognition of the South American republics 
appear printed at considerable length in the State Papers, but there is 
much of great value unprinted. Of this I need give no example. An 
examination of the references in Mr. Paxson's book. The Independence 
of the South American Republics, will enable one to see the kind of 
material not in print. As for the material leading up to the announce- 
ment of the Monroe doctrine, there is considerable that bears plainly 
on that question. The discussions between Rush and Castlereagh, and 



l8 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

those ^between Rush and Canning, are the most important. There is a 
series of very important despatches from Rush, some of which are 
known, but almost all of which are not printed in the State Papers. 
Of these, nearly all have recently been printed in an appendix to Ham- 
ilton's edition of the Writings of James Monroe (VI, 356-419). These 
letters, showing the marked capacity of Rush and his full statements 
of the American position, his independence and soundness of judg- 
ment, as well as the position of England, are of extreme interest. These 
despatches certainly prove that Rush was one of our ablest diplomatists 
and indicate how well the interests of the United States were cared for 
under the guidance of Adams and Rush during eight critical years. 

One series of papers, of the existence of which American historical 
students do not seem to have 'been aware, though, of course, they may 
have been used by some investigators without my knowledge, contains 
the diplomatic correspondence with Texas from the time when we 
acknowledged Texan independence to the time of admission of the 
state — ^more accurately, from May 21, 1837, to October 11, 1845. 
There are altogether six volumes, and a careful examination justifies 
an estimate that they contain 390,000 words. The Congressional series 
of executive documents contains considerable Texan material, but most 
of these papers refer to questions of boundary, to attempts to maintain 
neutrality in the war between Texas and Mexico, Indian depredations, 
trade relations, and matters of that kind. But the printed reports con- 
tain very little on the really important question of annexation or on the 
diplomatic and political relations between Texas and the United States. 
The archives, on the other hand, naturally contain imuch valuable in- 
formation and will be of service to the historian of the political, social, 
or industrial events and conditions of that period. The volume of in- 
structions contains very important letters from Upshur, Calhoun, and 
Buchanan, which are very necessary for the proper understanding of 
the events leading to annexation. The number of instructions, how- 
ever, is not large; there is one volume of fair copies, containing 131 
documents in 129 folio pages. Most of the instructions, however, are 
dated comparatively late in the history of the Texan question, and 
throw light on the later negotiations. The despatches from our minis- 
ters in Texas are contained in two large volumes, containing about 450 
different communications, and are, like the instructions, exceedingly 
valuable. They describe the political and industrial conditions in 
Texas, the course of the war between Texas and Mexico, the attitude 
of the Texans toward the United States, and the sentiment of annexa- 
tion. They show the relations between Texas and the European 
powers, the continuing belief that Texas and England might join hands. 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 1 9 

the question of boundary, and the steps taken for final annexation by 
the United States. Very few of these despatches have been printed. 
Some of the letters, of course, are not of historical significance, but 
others are of unusual interest. Notes to the Texas legation are not 
very many or of much interest ; doubtless most of the communications 
were oral. There are two very instructive volumes of notes sent by 
the Texan representatives to the State Department during eight years. 
The character and value of this Texan correspondence may well be 
indicated by the fact that they were found a few years ago to contain 
among other things the original draft of the Texan Declaration of 
Independence from Mexico, which on application of the governor of 
Texas was transferred to the keeping of Texas as properly belonging 
to that state and not to the nation. Of special interest, perhaps, are 
the papers written during 1843, 1844, and 1845, after the accession of 
Upshur to the secretaryship and the final admission of the state* (see 
XIV, XV, below). Attention should likewise be called to the papers, 
not far from five hundred in number, now in the Bureau of Rolls and 
Library ; they are the archives of the United States legation in Texas, 
whidh were transferred to Washington after Texas ceased to be a 
foreign state. 

I have in the preceding pages given but a faint idea of the amount 
and character of the valuable historical papers contained in the diplo- 
matic correspondence. f The more explicit statements I have given 
are only for the purpose of illustration. Below will be found a few 
documents chosen for the purpose of indicating the character of the 
material. They will illustrate in some measure (i) the kind of material 
not published in the State Papers; (2) that even when a series of 
papers relating to a particular subject has been printed, important docu- 
ments are often omitted; and (3) that when extracts of documents are 
printed, the omitted portions are often of great historical value and 
contain information which no longer need be kept from the public eye. 
In these letters the original spelling, punctuation, and arrangement has 
been carefully followed, with two exceptions : " and " has been sub- 
stituted for the figure &; and superior letters in abbreviations have 
been printed on the line. In some cases a misspelled word has been 
explained in a foot-note ; in others the correct word is so evident that 
no explanation has been thought necessary. 



*SoiTie of the important papers accompany Polk's message of December, 
1845. These are not referred to under " Texas " in Ferrell's Congressional 
Document Index. See Sen. Doc. i, 29 Cong., i sess. 

tFor an outline sketch of the entire archives of the Department of State, see 
Guide to the Archives of the Government of the United States in Washington, 
by C. H. Van Tyne and W. G. Leland, 1904, pages 2-31. 



20 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 



ILLUSTRATIVE DOCUMENTS. 



I. WiLUAM Short to John Jay. 
(Despatches, France, Volume i. Despatch No. 2.) 

Paris October 9th. 1789. 
Sir. 

I had the honor of announcing to you in a letter of the 30th. of 
Septem/ber the departure of Mr. Jefferson (from this place, a letter 
from him of the 8th. instant informs me that he was detained at Havre 
by contrary winds. 

Within these few days events of a very extraordinary and un- 
expected nature have taken place here. Three weeks ago a Regiment 
of Infantry had been ordered to Versailles, their arrival there was 
cause of Jealousy to the French guards who have acted a considerable 
■part in this revolution, and who instead of the post they formerly oc- 
cupied near the King's person are now in the pay of the City of Paris 
under the appellation of National guards, the distressing scarcity 
of bread which has continued here for some time had excited among 
the people much discontent and uneasiness, in this state of the minds 
of the soldiery and people, which it is apprehended designing persons 
wished to make use of, accounts were brought from Versailles of an 
entertainment given by the gardes du corps to the officers of the regi- 
ment of infantry, reports were printed and circulated in a number of 
inflammatory gazettes of circumstances having taken place at this en- 
tertainment which shewed designs unfriendly to present measures, 
this sufficed in these times of alarm and suspicion to create a con- 
siderable degree of fermentation ; and on Sunday evening the 4th. inst. 
large crowds assembled in the Palais Royale in a tumultuous manner, 
detachments of the guard were sent there and patrolled the garden; 
they did not attempt to disperse the people, as they had proceeded to 
no excess except in words, the night separated the crowd, as the same 
movements of the Palais Royal had taken place on other occasions and 
died away of themselves, this did not give particular alarm. However 
on monday morning large crowds assembled on the place de Greve — 
the greater part were women; who now took the lead, they forced 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 21 

the Hotel de Ville, the guard not thinking it proper to use violence in 
their resistance, little or no disorder was committed by these women, 
and they seem to have had no particular object in entering — the chest 
of money which was opened and shewed to them was left untouched, 
a reinforcement was sent to the guard who by degrees and peaceable 
measures recovered possession of the Hotel -de Ville. from hence 
they ran through the streets forcing many of their sex of a different 
order whom they met with in their way to join them — the cry now 
became general d Versailles, a Versailles — their numbers amounted to 
five or six thousand, many of them armed with swords, and thus began 
their procession to Versailles without having any determinate object. — 
the departure of this procession increased the tumult which still con- 
tinued on the Place de Greve. — ^The mob and regiment of French or 
National guards, united in insisting that the Marquis de la Fayette 
should lead them to Versailles — their clamours were increased by peo- 
ple who circulated reports in the crowd, that the King was about to 
retire to Metz, where there is a numerous garrison — the situation of 
the Marquis thus became the most critical that can be imagined, had 
he refused absolutely to go, he would have lost the confidence of the 
French guards (who had for some time been plotting an expedition to 
Versailles to recover their former post of honor in guarding the King) 
and would have become an immediate victim to the people assembled 
on the Place de Greve, and already furious on account of the delay — 
in consenting to march he had before 'him the prospect of finding on 
his arrival that the women who had gone off in the morning had been 
attacked by the gardes du corps and regiment of infantry at Ver- 
sailles, in that case, it would have been impossible for him to have 
withheld his troops and much less the thousands of furious and en- 
raged people who followed him armed with pikes and spears, from 
commencing a scene which must be left to be conceived, in considering 
that the King and his family as well as the National Assembly were 
on the spot. Monsieur de la Fayette finding it impossible to resist 
any longer this torrent which had been hitherto arrested by his cool- 
ness and address alone, sat out between five and six o'clock in the even- 
ing at the head of the greater part of the troops under his command. 

The women who had gone off in the morning arrived at Versailles 
just as the Assembly was rising, their arrival carried with it dismay — 
the streets were crowded with people who fled on all parts — the Mem- 
bers who were going out returned to their stations as to an Asylum — 
they were immediately followed by numbers of these women who cried 
out du {pain, du pain, they were answered that the Assembly had been 



22 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

deliberating on that article, and that the King was about to give orders 
in consequence, they left the Assembly to go in person to the King — 
a deputation of them was received by him and informed that measures 
had been taken to secure the supplies of Paris. 

As night approached the crowd and confusion increased : The 
troops consisting of the gardes du corps, the regiment of infantry and 
the garde Bourgeoise of Versailles all under the command of the 
Count D'Estaing, were drawn up in front of the Chateau — a scattering 
fire took place, not known how, between the gardes du corps and the 
people — several were wounded on both sides. — between nine and ten 
o'clock, the troops which had been thus drawn up were ordered to 
retire to their quarters, in order to prevent any similar accidents. 

When the Members who had seperated for dinner returned to the 
Assembly in the evening they found the room occupied by immense 
crowds of women who filled the galleries and most of the seats of the 
members ; some singing, some dancing, others crying out du pain, and 
many of them with swords hanging to their sides. In this confusion 
it was impossible to proceed regularly to business ; still the members 
continued assembled — a part of a deputation they had sent to the King 
returned bringing with them his acceptation pure and simple of the 
articles of the constitution and Bill of rights which had been sent to 
him some days before, and to Which by his answer received in the 
morning, he bad only acceded conditionally. 

In this situation the Marquis de la Fayette approached Versailles, 
about II o'clock at night, although on leaving Paris he was the 
prisoner of his troops and the mob which followed them, before his 
arrival he had obtained such a command over them that notwithstand- 
ing the impetuosity of the multitude he was able to halt them and make 
them swear Allegiance to the National Assembly and to the King 
before entering the town. This was the more necessary because* it 
was suspected a party attached to the Duke of Orleans had been tam- 
pering with his troops [not deciphered] and the mob and also because 
his designs in his present singular situation might have been liable to 
suspicion both to the King and the Assembly. 

M. de la Fayette leaving his troops thus halted went alone to the 
King, who after assuring him of the entire confidence which he placed 
in his loyalty and 'honor, agreed to be guarded in future by the national 
troops under his command, the posts around the Chateau which they 
had formerly occupied were immediately delivered to them, and from 



*From " because " to " Assembly " appears in the original in cipher. 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 23 

that moment their conduct was most exemplary — the remainder of the 
night was employed in keeping order amongst the thousands of people 
who continued flocking there from Paris. At six o'clock in the morn- 
ing (of tuesday) M. de la Fayette worn down by the fatigues of the 
preceding day and night, retired to repose himself — during his absence 
the mob became ungovernable — they fired on and killed the gardes du 
corps wherever they could find them — some of them in their flight 
were pursued into the Queen's Antichamber. She was awakened by 
the cries of death and fled into the chamber of the King, who had been 
also roused by the noise of immense crouds surrounding and running 
up and down the Chateau. M. de la Fayette, whose conduct on this 
occasion has acquired him from all parties the appellation of the 
guardian angel of the day, was immediately called up. the first objects 
which presented themselves to his view were the heads of two of the 
gardes du corps which the people were carrying on pikes through the 
streets in triumph — numbers of others about to become victims to the 
rage of the moment were rescued by him from slaughter — it is not 
yet ascertained how many fell. — 'The large court in front of the 
Chateau was now filled with the furious multitude. The King shewed 
himself to them from the terrace of his chamber — they insisted with 
loud cries that he should go to remain at Paris, he consented and 
added that he would carry the Queen and his family, it was not known 
how this would be received by them — fortunately it was answered with 
shouts of joy — ^this became the signal of universal reconciliation. 

The national Assembly being immediately informed of this de- 
cision of the King, resolved that they considered themselves as in- 
separable from his Majesty for the present Session and sent to inform 
him of their resolution to follow him to Paris. About twelve o'clock 
the King and Royal Family accompanied by a deputation of the national 
assembly left Versailles, they were preceded and followed by the 
troops of Paris, and the crowds which had been pressing there during 
all this time from the capital — at eight o'clock they arrived at the Hotel 
de Ville and were received there in great order by the Mayor and 
Commons of Paris, notwithstanding the confusion which might have 
been expected, from thence they went to lodge at the Chateau of the 
Thuilleries. — From this moment a calm reigned through all the streets 
which seemed to have been the effect of Magic, and the next morning 
to the astonishment of every body bread became as abundant as ever 
and has continued so since, this confirms the opinion that the scarcity 
was not real — there are many suspicions on this subject among all 
parties — ^but I see nothing like proof on any side — a number of people 



24 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

however are arrested on suspicion of having mischievous designs in 
stirring up the populace-^t is said also that large parcels of bread have 
been found thrown into the river in order to starve the people of Paris 
and thus render them ripe for revolt. — ^time alone can shew the truth 
of these things — one thing however which is certain is that if the late 
scarcity of bread should return, the effects of popular rage would be 
more than ever to be dreaded, as the king and particularly the queen 
will in that case be absolutely in the hands of a mob who in times of 
famine will be too strong for the guards.* I fear, Sir, I may have taken 
up too much of your time by the particularity of these details, but I 
thought it would be proper to lay under your view with minuteness the 
rise and progress of an event so singular in itself, and which must be 
so influential as well on the present deliberations of the national assem- 
bly as the future operations of government. It is not yet known what 
effect it will have in the provinces, the conjectures on this subject 
are various according [to] the views and party of the person who forms 
them, it being certain that it will be unsafe to deliver any other than 
the most popular sentiments in the Assembly whilst in Paris, it would 
seem as if the constituents of the other parts of the Kingdom might 
have just cause of complaint, but I am assured by members of informa- 
tion that so large a majority in all the provinces are consentaneous with 
the people of Paris that no reclamations are to be apprehended. The 
King has written to day a letter to the Assembly at Versailles in which 
he informs them that the proofs of affection and fidelity which he has 
received from the inhabitants of Paris have induced him to fix his 
residence here, and desires they will name com^missioners to chuse a 
proper place for their meeting in the Capital — they will continue their 
deliberations at Versailles untill a place shall be prepared for them here. 
The objects which occupy them at present are the remaining articles 
■of the constitution and a provisory change in their criminal procedure. 
I mentioned to you, Sir in my letter of September 30th. that the Assem- 
bly was taking measures in consequence of the plan then proposed to 
them by Mr. Necker on the subject of their finances — they have since 
enacted his plan into a Law and drawn up the address to their con- 
stituents in consequence of it, which I have the honor to inclose you. 
It is entirely of the composition of the Count de Mirabeau who was 
chosen for that purpose by the Assembly on account of his unrivalled 
eloquence. 



*Portions of fnis sentence are in cipher in the original. 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 25 

A political event of considerable moment is talked of as certainly 
to take place, it is said that England, Prussia and Holland have 
united to separate from the house of Austria their possessions in the 
Netherlands, and to render them independent — it is added that the 
Dutch and Prussian armies are already formed for that object, those 
who are supposed to be in the secret of these Cabinets say that this 
event will shew itself fully in the course of the next month. The 
Emperor has about 12,000 troops in those provinces — 'they will prob- 
ably make no resistance against the general ill humour and projected 
insurrection of the inhabitants supported by the Prussian and Dutch 
forces and English gold. An account has just arrived here also of the 
Imperial army which crossed the Danube on the nth and 12th. of 
Septr. in order to begin the siege of Belgrade having obtained a con- 
siderable advantage over the Turks. 

I am assured that the premium on the importation of wheat and 
flour is prolonged to December; but I have no official information of 
it, and I do not think it worth while to attempt to see the Minister on 
the subject in the present confusion, as the period is too short to have 
any influence on American supplies. As this letter goes by Post it 
will not be accompanied by the Gazettes of France and Leyden nor 
the Debates of the Assembly. I shall reserve them for a private hand. 
In the mean time, I beg you to be assured Sir of the profound respect 
with which I have the honor to be. Your most obt. humble Servant. 

W.[illiam] S[hort]. 

II. WiLUAM Short to John Jay. 
(Despatches, France, Volume i, Despatch No. 19.) 

Paris Feb. 10. 1790. 
Dear Sir. 

Since my last an event which has been expected 'for some time has 
taken place. On the 4th. inst. the King went to the Assembly and ad- 
dressed them in a speech which I have the honor of inclosing — ^the 
object is to put himself at the head as it were of the revolution, and 
thus to remove all the doubts and fears of its friends, and destroy the 
hopes of those who might wish to bring back the ancient order of 
things. — those who advised this measure had also in view the pro- 
priety of the King's taking some step which should contradict the 
assertions of those who insisted that he was not free and subscribed at 
present to the constitution only by force. — During the delivery of the 
speech, rage and despair were marked on the faces of a few of that 
class who are opposed to the revolution and who never believed till 



26 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

then that all 'hopes of a return to the former government were lost— 
a kind of discontent also was observable with some of those who are 
for carrying the revolution to a visionary degree, and who are con- 
sequently the enemies of whatever tends to stop it at present — ^they 
are also the enemies of M : Necker and criticise the speech, of which he 
is the author, in saying that it is filled with the praises of his admin- 
istration which were exaggerated, and misplaced on that occasion — 
these two extremes of the assembly being excepted, the measure taken 
by the King produced a degree of enthusiasm on all present of which 
there are few examples — ^^he was followed to his palace by a deputation 
of the assembly and by the shouts and acclamations of thousands of his 
subjects — the Queen with the Dauphin received the King and the 
deputation of the assembly — she addressed the deputation in a short 
but popular speech — this was reported to the assembly and recieved 
with the loudest applauses by all the members and spectators present. — 
It was proposed that each member should separately take the oath 
which you will see on the paper inclosed — ^this was done by all pres- 
ent except three — the suppliants and the deputies of the chambers of 
commerce, and spectators all solicited the assembly to be admitted to 
take the same oath, which they did by all holding out the hand at the 
same time and answering to the oath read to them. " Je le Jure." — 
this enthusiasm passed in the instant from the assembly to the Hotel 
de ville where the commons of Paris' were assembled — the oath was 
immediately taken there — and since that every day has been employed 
by the districts and troops as well regular as militia in taking it. — ^The 
same flame will certainly spread through the provinces — where it is 
to be hoped it will put an end to the violences and disorders which are 
committing in several of them against the persons and property of the 
nobles disaffected to the Revolution. 

It was hoped that this measure would be useful to the public 
credit, but the stocks continue falling — I own it appears to me an ex- 
traordinary circumstance the domains and ecclesiastical property of 
which the nation is to have the disposal and which it is known will be 
sold for the payment of the national debt, are such a mass of wealth 
that it was natural to hope they alone would have re-established public 
credit. — still this diminishes every day. It is said that the conferences 
begun at lassy between the Imperial and Ottoman ministers have 
ceased — it is not known however with certainty; but nothing effectual 

towards peace is expected from them at present Preparations are 

publicly making for war in Prussia — the army is forming with rapidity 
in Poland — and a proof that the Emperor does not consider the Turk 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 27 

as his most dangerous enemy is that the Baron de Laudhon* is not to 
command the army against them in the ensuing campaign, for which 
the two Imperial courts are making active preparations. 

The affairs in the low countries present two faces — with respect 
to the Emperor he seems to have abandoned all except Luxemburgh — 
the citadel is impregnable to undisciplined troops, and the province is 
attached to the Emperor at present by his promise to exempt them from 
taxes during twenty years — the other face shews these countries divided 
among themselves and unable to agree on a constitution which can be 
permanent. The Duke D'Ursel and the family of D'Arembergf by far 
the most powerful in that country have put themselves at the head of 
the popular party — their design is to determine that the sovereignty 
'belongs to the people at large — ^^the Nobles and Clergy insist that the 
sovereignty devolved on them, viz — les Etats — on the forfeiture of the 
Emperor — they are as yet the strongest and are supported by Prussia 
and Holland. The Duke D'Ursel had been appointed chief of the mili- 
tary department — a Prussian general, M. de SchonfeldJ being lately 
added to him he has given up his employment — this is considered as a 
victory of the States over the popular party — the present conjectures 
are that the States, i. e. the clergy and Noblesse have entered into 
secret engagements with Prussia and Holland — and that one of the 
objects is to unite the Belgick with the Dutch provinces under the 
Stadhouderat of the house of Orange — England in this case must have 
some compensation given her — and various conjectures are formed on 
the subject — if such engagements are taken they must soon come to 
light, as the commencement of the campaign will necessarily point out 
the dbject of it. 

Not being able to send the papers as mentioned in my last I add 
to them at present those which have come out since together with the 
first report of the committee of judicature and send them by a private 
conveyance to Havre to day. Supposing they will be longer going than 
the Post I forward this letter with its inclosures by it. — Among the 
papers abovementioned there is the Compte generale des finances, etc. 
for the Secretary of the treasury. I have received from London the 
President's speech on the opening of Congress. Having not yet heard 
of your quitting the department of foreign affairs I take the liberty of 
continuing to address my letters to you, and am happy in having an 
opportunity of repeating to you Sir, the assurances of respect and 
attachment with which I have the honor to be 

Your most obedient humble servant 

W Short. 



*Laudon. fD'Arenberg. JSchoenfeld. 



28 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

The inclosed are the papers mentioned in my No. i8— to which 
I have since added others— and among them the present general state- 
ment of the finances of this country for the Secretary of the Treasury 
as I suppose this packet will go with less expedition than a letter sent 
by post I make use of that conveyance for mine of to-day. 

Paris Feb. lo, 1790. 

W[illiam] Short. 

III. William Short to John Jay. 
(Despatches, France, Volume i, Despatch No. 32.) 

Paris May the 23d. 1790. 

Dear Sir 

The constitutional question of the right of war and peace, which 
I mentioned to you in my last, has occupied the assembly without in- 
terruption since that time. It was finally decided yesterday evening as 
you will see by the articles of the decree which I have the honor to 
inclose you. It seems to have given general satisfaction — ^^The min- 
istry and aristocratic party are contented because they feared that still 
less power would have been left to the King — The Demagogues of the 
assembly have the appearance of being satisfied, because it is a part 
of their plan to make the people of Paris believe that they triumph in 
the assembly. Consequently when they find themselves about to lose 
a question they adopt such parts of the opposite as engage on their side 
a sufficient number of the doubtful members to enable them to have 
the appearance of carrying their point. No debate has ever shewed 
these manoeuvres with so much evidence, as that decided yesterday 
evening. 

In the course of this long debate a great number of orators pre- 
sented different shades of opinion — they may all however be resolved 
into three distinct classes — those who were for vesting every power 
relative to peace and war, treaties of alliance, and in fine whatever 
regarded foreign nations, in the hands of the Monarch — they were 
composed of the aristocratic party headed by the Abbe Maury and 
Cazales — those who were for excluding the monarch entirely from 
the power of peace and war, as being a portion of the public will 
which could be exercised only by the representatives of the people, 
without danger to their interests — they were headed by the two Lameths 
and Duport, members of the Noblesse, and Barnave a lawyer from 
Dauphine — all of them young men of talents and who have for some 
time distinguished themselves as the Demagogues of the assembly — 
finally those whose opinions held a middle rank, who thought this part 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 29 

of the sovereignty should be delegated concurrently to the executive 
and legislative 'body; or at least who supported that opinion from an 
idea that it was the best that could be carried at present — they were 
headed by the IVIarquis de la fayette, Mirabeau and Chapelier. There 
was no doubt that if the votes of the assembly were taken with calm 
and independence this latter opinion would triumph, a part of its 
opponents therefore tried to enlist on their side the people of Paris; it 
is suspected that money was distributed among them for that purpose, 
certain it is that in the crowds which assemble in the different parts of 
Paris several street orators were heard haranguing the people to point 
out to them the danger to which they would be exposed if the national 
assembly did not reserve to itself the right of war and peace — the 
present preparations for war were constantl}^ quoted as a proof in 
point — it was said that the ministry had excited the court of Spain in 
order that an army being assembled, they might undertake a counter 
revolution. Other absurdities of a similar nature were circulated with 
industry and easily imposed on the credulity of the multitude — what 
alarmed them still more was the report that Mirabeau was gained over 
to the Ministry — unfortunately the moral character of this member 

whose talents are tmrivalled, is no obstacle to such a report When 

he delivered his opinion and proposed his decree two days ago his 
eloquence wrested applauses from all parties and particularly from the 
public galleries who are in the habit of expressing their satisfaction or 
discontent without restraint — ^but in the course of the night and the next 
day the people were inspired with the belief that he wished to vest the 
contested power in the hands of the Monarch — His speech was attacked 
with art, address, and eloquence by Barnave — the marks of approba- 
tion given by the galleries to this attack were without example and 
encouraged the orator to proceed to an indirect crimination of the 
Marquis de la fayette, who he knew would support Mirabeau's opin- 
ion, and from whose character and influence every thing was to be 
feared. In passing through the crowd assembled in the Tuilleries he 
was carried in triumph by them to his carriage — this was considered 
by many as the signal of the decline of the Marquis de la fayette's 
popularity and gave real alarm to all parties — because all agree, even 
those who are opposed to the revolution and consequently his enemies, 
that it is his influence alone which preserves . the order and security 
which is enjoyed in the capital. The next day (yesterday) a pamphlet 
was cried in all the streets called the treachery of the Count de Mira- 
beau, and he instead of being the idol of the people, received marked 
proofs of their discontent on his way to the assembly. Notwithstand- 



30 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

ing this he continued firm in his opinion, he answered the attack of 
Barnave, pulverized his arguments, and with a degree of eloquence of 
which there has been no example in the assembly, inveighed against 
the low and artful intrigues of his adversaries — he was applauded by 
the assembly, but not at all by the galleries who are the thermometer 
of the opinions of the people without doors — there were then greater 
crowds than had ever been seen in the Tuilleries — they shewed in their 
discourses menacing signs of displeasure, swore that Mirabeau was a 
traitor and should be hung to the lantern, and sometimes discovered 
even a desire to enter the assembly — In this situation of things the 
assembly proceeded by way of preliminary to decide, which of the three 
plans proposed should be first voted on. — ^The Marquis de la fayette 
who had not yet spoken, and who thought himself bound to give more 
than a silent vote on the question, made a short speech in favor of that 
proposed by Mirabeau, and supported the motion for its having the 
priority — Many who from their suspicions of Mirabeau feared there 
was treachery in his plan, adhered to it from their confidence in the 
Marquis de la fayette, so that the priority was granted it by a large 
majority — the leaders of the more popular party finding that the plan 
which had obtained the priority would certainly obtain also the prefer- 
ence of the assembly, and not chusing to have the appearance of having 
lost the victory, gave into the current of Mirabeau's decree with slight 
verbal alterations which they proposed — thus the several articles of 
the decree were passed without further opposition, and the crowds in 
the Tuilleries separated without disorder because they were informed 
by the demagogues of the assembly that the question had been decided 
agreeably to their wishes. It will be bappy if the fermentation which 
has appeared among the people for these two or three days past should 
thus subside; but it is hardly to be expected, as it has been hitherto 
found much more easy to excite them than to check their movements 
when roused. 

In the mean time preparations for equipping a fleet are going on 
with activity in the ports of this Kingdom, as well as Spain. In 
England the activity of their operations announces a real design of 
war. — ^The idea of the French Ambassador in London and of the Min- 
istry here is that as yet it is not absolutely certain what are the real 
designs of the cabinet of St. James — they say that if the vessels seized 
and the disputed navigation of those coasts are the real and sole causes 
of the armament there is no doubt that there will be peace — that is to 
say that Spain will be induced to negotiate and make the necessary 
sacrifices — ^but they add, that if the wishes of England are to profit 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 3 1 

of the present situation of Europe in order to undertake an advan- 
tageous war (and which they seem to apprehend) they have no doubt 
they will find some other pretext to which no negociation can he op- 
posed. I have very sufficient proofs that these are the sentiments of 
ministry here and that they are not yet fixed in their opinions as to the 
real object of the preparations going on in England. 

You will without doubt have seen before you receive this letter 
the memorial of one of the owners of the vessels seized in Nootka 
sound. It appears by it that there were two American vessels there at 
the same time which were unmolested by the Spanish commander, and 
which even seem to have ibeen employed in a part of the operation. The 
English Minister at this court considers the American vessels as having 
been forced to this against their will. I do not know what is the opinion 
of his court on this subject. It would seem natural that it should be 
the same. 

No change has as yet taken place in the ministry here — that which 
I mentioned to you in a former letter as being very probable was first 
postponed for particular reasons and is at present not thought of. a 
change of circumstances may perhaps bring on again a plan which was 
then near its execution. 

It is believed that the Emperor of Morocco is dead — it was re- 
ported some time ago when it was not true. At present however there 
seems no doubt, although my last letters from Mr. Carmichael do not 
mention it. It is probable his successor will not be very scrupulous as 
to the treaties existing. I do not venture to use the cypher which Mr. 
Jeflferson left with me, as my experience of that for Mr. Carmichael 
shews me there is some mistake, and makes me fear it may be the same 
as to yours. — I am still ignorant of the arrangements which may have 
taken place in the department of foreign aflfairs, and therefore con- 
sider myself as authorized to continue addressing you my letters — 
I hope you will allow me to add to them assurances of the respect and 
attachment with which I have the honor to be Sir, 

Your most obedient servant. 

W[iIvUAm] Short. 



32 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

IV. WiivUAM Short to John Jay. 

(Despatches, France, Volume i. Despatch No. 36.) 

Paris July the 7th. 1790. 

Dear Sir — 

I have just received your letter of the 27th of May, which has 
been sent here from L'Orient by M. de Crevecoeur. My last letters will 
■have informed you of the present situation of the business relative to 
the American captives at Algiers. You will have seen there that noth- 
ing has been done, or possible to be done, for their redemption. This 
I know will not surprize you when you recollect the circumstances at- 
tending it. Still I shall leave nothing untried and will write you regu- 
larly as you desire respecting it. — Some days ago a person who has 
resided many years at Algiers, called on me in company with M. 
Volney whom you know, to speak of a means of procuring peace with 
that Regency on advantageous terms. It was for Congress to equip 
some frigates themselves, or to authorize a company to do it, and to 
cruise in the Mediterranean, particularly on the coast of Egypt against 
the Turkish merchant vessels — He said it was unquestionable that the 
Porte could force Algiers to conclude a treaty with any power what- 
ever — that finding their commerce harassed, the Turks would gladly 
exchange their interposition at Algiers for its security — and that thus 
the United States who would be sure of failing so long as they should 
address the Algerines by embassies or entreaties, would be as sure of 
succeeding whenever they should speak to the fears and interest of 
the Turks. — this is the leading idea of his plan, which he seems to have 
considered under all its circumstances. He went into several details 
respecting it, which he is to communicate to me in writing. He has 
reasons for not chusing to be named ; but wishes his ideas to be com- 
municated to Congress. His calculation is that three frigates manned 
by two hundred men each would suffice. He does not propose their 
cruising off Algiers because a greater number would then be necessary 
— ^because a much longer time would be requisite for making an im- 
pression on the Algerines by this means ; and consequently the success 
much less certain. He proposes cruising against the Turkish merchant- 
men ibecause the prizes would much more than indemnify for the ex- 
pences of equipment and because it is much the most expeditious and 
certain mode of effecting the business at Algiers. His favorite idea is 
that the affair should be mercantile — viz. that all the expences should 
be furnished by individuals on the condition of their having all the 
profits, and he desires to be interested in the enterprize by placing a 
part of his fortune in it. He wishes that Congress should give the let- 
ters of marque for reasons that are obvious. There are several objec- 
tions which occur at first view, to this plan: still as it may lead to 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 33 

something towards the business with Algiers I thought it my duty to 
communicate it. This person's long residence at Constantinople and 
at Algiers gives him an opportunity of being fully acquainted with the 
relations which subsist between those two countries. He says there are 
several instances where the Regency has not complied with the requisi- 
tions of the Porte; tout that they are cases where the Porte makes 
requisitions for form sake, and where a private agreement takes place 
for exempting the Regency from obedience — He affirms that the Re- 
gency never disobeys -the decided will of the Porte — It is from thence 
he concludes that the United States should make use of the Porte in 
order to effect their peace. The Turkish interest toeing more exposed to 
the attacks of the United States than that of Algiers, is an additional 
motive, as it is interest alone which will weigh with them. 

It has toeen said in the national assemtoly lately that the last peace 
with Algiers cost France 1400,000 1. instead of 800,000 1. as I men- 
tioned in a former letter. I have toeen since assured that the additional 
600,000 1. were occasioned by the after charges and unexpected exac- 
tions of the Regency. You will remember they did the same with 
respect to Spain. It is apprehended that some unauthorized violence 
lately offered by the inhabitants of the French coast of the Medi- 
terranean to a number of Algerines, will force France to renew, the 
humiliation and expences of another treaty. 

You express a wish that I should be able to obtain the free intro- 
duction of our salted provisions into France. — My letters will have 
shewn that I have not lost sight of this important subject. — and in my 
No. 33. I inclosed you a letter which Mr. Lambert the Comptroller 
general had written me relative to it. Mr. Necker has since told me 
he would give orders for a contract for a small supply merely as an 
experiment. He wished me to recommend some American merchant 
for this purpose. I knew of none except Parker who is in London, and 
I have written to him on the subject, tout do not know whether he will' 
give himself the trouble for a small contract. Mr. Necker doubts much 
whether the people of Paris will be brought to make use of salted pro- 
visions at any price however moderate, for some time to come. The 
only duties to which salted provisions from America are subjected as 
you will have seen toy Mr. Lamtoert's letter, are those which are paid 
on French provisions passing from one part of France to another. I 
have no doubt that even those duties will be taken off as soon as the 
new regulations of commerce take place — At present however the 
ministry cannot take it on themselves, and in fact do nothing of the 
kind. It shall however ^be fully attended to; and the exception as to 
tonnage not forgotten, as soon as I shall know that it has passed. 



34 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

I communicated to Mr. Necker the Resolve which you inclosed 
me in a former letter. He received with pleasure that proof of the 
attention of Congress to their foreign engagements. He is very anxious 
to know their decision relative to the loan lately made at Amsterdam. 
I still think as formerly that a person properly authorized by Congress 
might make that loan the .basis of others so as to effect on advan- 
tageous and sure terms such as they will judge proper probably to 
have made for the discharge of their debts due this country, and which 
it is so essential to attend to without delay, from a variety of con- 
siderations. 

The subject of the Duke of Orleans's return was brought before 
the assembly yesterday by a letter which he wrote to his Chancellor to 
be communicated to them. He said that he was preparing to leave 
London when the Ambassador of France called on him with an aide 
de camp of M. de la fayette, who told him that the general conjured 
him not to return to Paris. He wished the national assembly to be con- 
sulted and added that if they declared quil n'y avoit point lieu a de- 
liherer, he should consider it as a pemiission to return. M. de la 
fayette in answer to this letter observed to the assembly that 'he had 
informed the Duke of Orleans that the reasons for his absenting him- 
self still continued. He took that oppo. however of assuring the assem- 
bly that the more the 14th. approached the less grounds he saw for the 
alarms which were circulated as to the event of that day. 

The assembly proceeded to the order of the day without taking the 
letter into consideration, but at the same time avoiding the expression 
qu'il n'y avoit pas lieu a deliberer. — 'It is therefore still uncertain 
whether the Duke will return. The King has written to him also to 
engage him to defer it for the present. — In the mean time he has pub- 
lished what he calls an 'expose de sa conduite dans la revolution de 
Prance.' — this was probably intended as his precursor, it is a narrative 
of facts known to every body — and neither proves or disproves any 
thing. 

The deputies are arriving from all parts of France for the 14th. 
'besides those who are deputed a great number of others come as spec- 
tators — it began to be feared that the works of the Champ de Mars 
would not be finished in time — some volunteers went to assist the work- 
men employed — this spread like a flame through Paris and people of 
both sexes and all ranks and descriptions flock there to work — this 
carries others as spectators so that the Champ de Mars is every day so 
crowded as scarcely to leave room for the carting of the earth and 
other operations of the sort which are going on there. Many legs and 
arms have already been broken in the confusion — these crowds going 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 35 

and returning give the streets of Paris the appearance they had last 
year as to numbers — ^but very different as to humour — as yet they are 
all gaiety. Still it is impossible to say what impulsion they may take, 
if they are to be acted on as is suspected by foreign gold. — ^The en- 
thusiasm has extended beyond the limits of Paris, at this instant large 
numbers of peasantry from the neighbouring villages are formed in a 
line of march which extends from the new grille to a considerable dis- 
tance beyond M. de Richelieu's, and are going to work at the Champ 
de Mars. 

The committee of constitution are preparing a decree by the direc- 
tion of the assembly, in order to explain that of the 19th. " They propose 
to allow every person to retain the name he is accustomed to — the titles 
however to fee abolished, i. e. — all public acts where they are used to 
be void. — some other alterations also will be made as to the article 
concerning liveries and coats of arms. One of the members of the 
assembly, the Baron de Menou, proposed some time ago that all orders 
should be abolished, such as cordons bleus — rouge etc. — the order of 
the day however was brought on without the motion being then taken 
up. Still one of the leading members of the committee of constitution 
is for rendering it a constitutional decree — should it be proposed by 
that committee, which however is not certain, it will unquestionably pass. 

Some time ago one of the imembers of the assembly was arrested 
by the orders of a municipality on suspicion of trying to debauch a regi- 
ment. — ^the question of inviolability feeing taken up on account of this 
affair, it was decreed that it extended even to criminal cases — that is, 
that no member should be arrested unless the accusation were pre- 
viously laid before the assembly, who should decide whether there were 
grounds for arrest. — to-day a creditor of one of their members has 
written to them that 'he has obtained judgment, and desired to know if 
he was authorized to proceed to arrest him — it was decided that he 
could — thus the inviolability of the members is for criminal and not 
for civil cases. — ^these contradictions must necessarily arise so long as 
the assembly proceed as at present in passing laws on a single reading. 

A letter has just arrived here from Bilbao written by a well known 
merchant, which says the Spanish Ministry had sent to inform them 
there that an arrangement had taken place with England — in conse- 
quence of which all vessels might follow their destination with safety. 
M. Bourgoin[g] tells me that he knows the writer of the letter and is 
persuaded of its veracity. He has no doubt that arrangements are made 
for continuing the peace between Spain and England. He remains 
however, and so does M. Montmorin, astonished that the first intelli- 
gence should come by a private and circuitous chanel. there is no 



36 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

doubt that the terms of accomodation must be disadvantageous to 
Spain. More certain intelligence is hourly expected. The last accounts 
of the British fleet are that it was still at Torbay — ^their destination 
therefore still as uncertain as when they left port. — You will no doubt 
have learned that several American sailors were impressed in London, 
and that they were rescued by the zealous exertions and activity of Mr. 
Cutting. Since then one other has been impressed whom Mr. Cutting 
has been unable to get released. He is on board of the fleet and will 
probably be forced to serve so long as they have any occasion for him. 
You will certainly have received from Mr. Cutting the particulars of 
this affair which seems to deserve the earliest attention of Congress, 
and points out the necessity of some arrangement being made for pre- 
venting such cases in future. 

I omitted mentioning above that the number of our prisoners at 
Algiers is now reduced to fourteen — a Scotch boy who was among them 
having been redeemed by the intervention of the English Consul — the 
price was somewhat more than 7000 1. but additional and unavoid- 
able expences raised it on the whole to about 8000 1. The person of 
whom I spoke in the beginning of this letter, told me that he thought 
the remaining captives might be redeemed at the same price for the 
common sailors and about 12,000 1. for each of the Captains. He 
added that the Spanish Consul was at present in the greatest favor with 
the Regency, and would be the most proper person for being charged 
with such a commission. The same person told me that he had under- 
stood the present Emperor of Morocco had begun his reign by 
shewing dispositions to observe the treaties made by his predecessor. 
He thought it probable that ours would be continued. In general how- 
ever I have understood that we should be obliged to renew it. this is 
the opinion also of Carmichael, from whom you will certainly first 
learn the result. — ^I mention to you in the case of his letters being longer 
on their way, that he has received your dispatches of the nth. of April, 
and been presented in consequence of the new letter of credence. 

I beg you to be assured of the sentiments of respect and attach- 
ment with which I am. 

Dear Sir 

Your most obedient humble servant 

W[iIvUam] Short. 

P. S. The Leyden gazettes will be inclosed in this letter — ^The 
journals of the assembly and other papers shall be forwarded to Havre 
by the diligence to be sent by the first vessel sailing for New- York. 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 37 
V. John Jay to Edmund Randolph. 

(Despatches, England, Volume i.) 
private London 13 Septr. 1794 

Sir 

I have had the pleasure of receiving your Letter by Mr Fisher. 
He called when I was from Home. Then and directly afterwards, I 
was so engaged in public Business, as that I could not return his visit 
immediately. The moment I could find Liesure for the purpose, I 
called with Col. Trumbull at his Lodgings ; and was mortified to learn 
that he had just gone to Liverpool. I hope on his Return to see him, 
and then to have an opportunity of shewing him those Civilities and 
attentions which I shall always think due to your Recommendations. 

In my public Letter to you by this opportunity, I thought it most 
delicate to omit mentioning that your Letter by Mr. Munro, and his 
Speech to the Convention are regarded here as not being consistant with 
the neutral situation of the U. S. an uneasy sensation has thereby been 
made here in the public mind, and probably in that of the Cabinet. It 
is not pleasant for me to say these things, but so is the fact, and it is 
proper that you should know it. 

I enclose two pamphlets. How far the Ideas they convey may be 
useful in our Country I cannot say. 

With the best Wishes for your Health and Happiness 
I am Sir your most obt. Hble servt. 

John Jay. 

The Honl. Edm. Randolph Esqr. 

VI. John Q. Adams to the Secretary of State [John Marshall]. 

(DespatCiies, Germany, Special Volume, Despatch No. 182.) 

Berlin 21 February 1801. 

Sir 

In addition to the papers, which I had the honour of sending you 
with my last letter, I now enclose a translation of the ordinance an- 
nexed to the Convention for an armed neutrality, and referred to in 
its third Article. 

It is yet possible that England may discover some means of avoid- 
ing the issue of a War with almost all Europe, on this occasion ; but I 
know not by what other expedient than that of conforming herself to 
the principles prescribed by the Northern powers. 



38 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

But if she should persist in her refusal to recognize them, a war 
will inevitably be the consequence, and as there is some reason to ap- 
prehend that endeavours will be made on the part of the coalition to 
draw the United States into it, I take the liberty of stating to you as 
briefly as possible the considerations upon which it appears to me that it 
would be neither just nor expedient for us to take any part in this 
quarrel. 

It would not be just, because the Government of the United States, 
have long since declared their opinion that by the law of Nations, in- 
dependent of the stipulations of Treaties, an enemy's cargo cannot be 
protected by a neutral bottom ; and though always desirous to establish 
the contrary by voluntary agreement, they have ever disavow'd all 
pretence of a right to force its adoption upon other powers ; and by the 
positive engagement of a Treaty are bound to acquiesce in the practice 
of the rule as it originally stood. It is true that Sweden and Denmark 
are expressly bound by the stipulations of their Treaties with England, 
in the same manner, nor do I know upon what grounds those powers 
can reconcile their antient with their modern stipulations. But even 
if the question was considered as doubtful ; the fundamental principle 
of this league seems unjust ; it has itself the radical defect against which 
it professes to contend. It assumes a right of legislation upon the sea. 
It is an enactment ex parte, by two nations, of laws upon objects of 
common concern to all, with a declaration that if other nations will 
not submit to them peaceably they shall be forced upon them at the 
mouth of the cannon. It is impossible to assume the supremacy of 
the seas more plainly and arrogantly than this. The inconsistency of 
the league with the liberty which it professes to support, is striking 
in the very expression of the third article — ^The two sovereigns say, 
that to prevent the liberty of trade and navigation, and neutral rights 
from depending upon arbitrary construction, dictated by a partial and 
momentary interest, they understand and will (what else is that but 
arbitrary construction?) that in time of war, all neutral ships, shall 
neutralize all the property on board except a specific list of contra- 
band. — It is well known that this idea of being the legislatrix of the 
ocean, and giving the world a code of naval laws was the lure of flat- 
tery by which the empress Catherine was first drawn into the original 
armed neutrality, the nature and tendency of which she so little under- 
stood, that she thought it pointed against Spain, and much to the ad- 
vantage of England. 

In expressing thus unequivocally my opinion that this league is 
not founded upon a basis of justice, I beg not to be understood as ap- 
proving the practices towards neutrals of the british navy, or all the 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 39 

principles avowed by the british admiralty courts. There is too much 
reason for the complaints of neutral -powers against these, and I should 
consider a real armed neutrality, a concert of neutral powers to main- 
tain if necessary 'by force their com^mon rights against violation, as 
perfectly justifiable, as a desirable object. Had this new league even 
been such as the newspapers in Holland and Germany have represented 
it — had it left the litigious belligerent and neutral claims respecting the 
character of a ship and her cargo, to be stipulated by Treaty, engaging 
at the same time to conclude no Treaty for the future with any power 
which should refuse to recognize the predominance of the neutral right, 
no objection of injustice could have been made against it. I have often 
avowed the hope that some such concert might take place ; but there 
appears less chance for it now than ever. 

To those who think that any measure on the part of a nation can 
be expedient, which is at the same time unjust, it may be much more 
questionable what the conduct of the United States on this occasion 
should be. While Britain is at War with all Europe, it is probable to 
say the least that she will sink under the contest. To join in the num- 
ber of her enemies may be considered as advisable to avoid their resent- 
ment, and to share in her spoils. By joining them we should make the 
common triumph more certain, and we should establish forever the 
most liberal principles for the benefit of neutral navigation. We should 
obtain satisfaction for the long complaints of our commerce, and 
security against the repetition of such abuses for the future. Some* of 
these motives, perhaps no one would avow, yet if the consideration of 
justice is to be set aside they are the strongest that can be urged. But 
the triumph of the coalition, even if we should join it is very far from 
being certain — ^Should it be obtained, it would only be after a struggle 
in which all the powers concerned in the league who have any con- 
siderable interest in the principles of maritime law, would have sacri- 
ficed more of blood and treasure than centuries of undisturbed enjoy- 
ment of their principles could repair. England has the advantage 
of standing alone, and of having her forces applied by a single interest ; 
of contending upon her own element, and in a defensive cause. Her 
enemies are divided in interests — The only two formidable powers of 
the league, entered it for the purpose of securing objects entirely distinct 
from the rights of navigation — Should they succeed in obtaining their 
real purposes they will very soon abandon the pretexts ; when once they 



*From here the writing is done with a different pen, and apparently on a 
different day, after Adams had had time to think over the conclusions he had 
already set forth. 



40 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

have secured their own interests they will drop one by one from the 
league, and leave their feeble allies to be the victims of the contest. 
Should they fail, they will he still readier to forsake an unsuccessful 
cause — ^The experience of the last ten years has abundantly proved that 
success and defeat are alike efficacious in dissolving enormous coalitions 
against a single great power. Thus probable as it may be that England 
will be ruined by this War, the probability is much greater that the 
inferior maritime states leagued against her will meet the same fate. 
As a mere question of choice between two evils, if we must choose 
between the resentments of the whole coalition and a War with Eng- 
land, we should prdbably receive the greatest damage from the last — 
I am likewise convinced that a fix'd resolution to persevere through 
this new contest in that neutrality which was established as our true 
system of policy at the commencement of the maritime War, will carry 
us through all the inconveniences, embarassments and vexations to 
which the coolness or even the resentment of the coalition may sub- 
ject us. 

To the Government of the United States, I am persuaded that the 
last of these considerations will be unnecessary — ^^They will enquire 
only what conduct the national honour and dignity, the laws of nations 
and the engagements of Treaties dictate, and to these they will faith- 
fully adhere. But to ensure the respect of both parties, this system must 
be supported by a respectable naval force; and a force which in case 
of War would be scarcely better than none at all, will amply suffice for 
the support of neutrality. 

I am most respectfully. Sir, your very humble and obedt. Servt. 

John Q. Adams. 

P. S — The reports of Peace between France and Austria noticed 
in all my late letters were erroneous. It is now given out for certain 
that the peace was signed on the 9th : It is both with the Emperor and 
the Empire. So I am informed, though this is not so certain, as that 
it is burdensome, as might be expected, to the house of Austria. 

The Secretary of State 

VII. John Quincy Adams to James Monroe;. 

(Despatches, Russia, Volume 2, Despatch No. 105.) 
The Secretary of State of the United States 

St. Petersburg 2 February 1813. 
Sir 

I have continued in the Extracts from the Gazettes to give you the 
substance of all the official Bulletins published here relating to the 
military operations of the War between Russia and France. The 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 4I 

Catastrophe of the French armies has been more complete than the 
imagination of the most sanguine of their Enemies ever anticipated, 
and as terrible as the most inveterate could have desired. Their losses 
by the most moderate computations exceed three hundred thousand men. 

The Emperor Napoleon personally succeeded in making his escape, 
and travelling with equal secrecy and rapidity, without guards, without 
attendants, accompanied only by the Duke of Vicence, and passing 
under his name reached Paris late at Night on the i8th. Deer. The 
next day he received upon his Throne addresses from the Senate and 
Council of State, addresses which together with his answers to them 
have been published. During his absence, and while he was yet in the 
Career of victory, a formidable conspiracy against his Government 
had been defeated only by a premature attempt to accomplish its object. 
W'hen the disasters of his armies had become too great to admit of 
concealment, they were partially acknowledged in a Bulletin which was 
published just before his arrival at Paris, and which produced symp- 
toms of popular fermentation threatening the stability of his authority. 
The project of restoring the throne of France to the House of Bourbon 
is again strenuously urged in the English Ministerial papers; that of 
reducing France to its antient limits as when governed by the Bourbons, 
though less distinctly avowed, is inseperably connected with it. They 
are both naturally favoured here, and certainly at no period since the 
commencement of the French Revolution have the Circumstances of the 
times given greater appearance of plausibility to the design. 

The War in its progress has been extremely destructive and dis- 
tressing to Russia, but its result has been not only to deliver her en- 
tirely from that terror of the French Power, which had spread itself 
so universally over the whole Continent of Europe, but to place in the 
hands of Russia herself that predominant influence which France had 
been so long and so perseveringly striving to establish. It is scarcely 
possible but that henceforth Russia should be the arbitress of Europe 
by Land. Her loss of Human lives in this dreadful struggle has prob- 
ably been greater than that of France. Her loss of property has cer- 
tainly been more considerable. But her losses have not been in the 
sinews of her strength. Those of France have been in the vitals of 
her military power. The spell of the Emperor Napoleon's name is not 
yet totally dissolved. His friends yet cherish a vague and general hope, 
and his Enemies feel an involuntary fear that his transcendant Genius 
(so they term it) will yet burst forth, chain down Fortune at his feet, 
and range the world again, conquering and to conquer. I see no sub- 
stantial ground for such a hope or such a fear. The highest proba- 



42 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

'bilities now are that his fall will be as great as his elevation has been 
extraordinary, and with regard to his Genius, if it ever surpassed that 
of other great Generals and Statesmen, it has most assuredly deserted 
him in the undertaking, and in the execution of the Russian War. That 
it was lightly, wantonly — unjustly undertaken I have the most thorough 
conviction from an attentive and impartial observation of its rise and 
progress, of which my communications from this place to your Depart- 
ment during that whole period contain the result. That in its execu- 
tion the most flagrant and egregious blunders or imprudences, con- 
tinually insulted the indulgence of Fortune, and produced his final 
overthrow, is equally clear and far more notorious. The Genius, that 
suffer'd the most inveterate of Russia's Enemy's, the Ottoman Porte, 
to conclude a disadvantageous Peace with her at the very moment 
when he was invading Poland, released Admiral Tchichagoflf's army to 
force his right wing and close upon his rear on one side. The Genius 
that drove Sweden, under one of his own Generals, into the arms of 
Russia, released another army from Inraborg* and the Finland fron- 
tier, with which Wittgenstein forced his left Wing at Polotsk, and 
closed upon his rear on the other side. The Genius which rushed 
headlong on to Moscow in September without foreseeing or preparing 
for the possible necessity of retreat, in Winter, and the Genius, which 
found ice and frost premature, in November, under Polish and Russian 
skies, is not that sort of Genius which by the steadiness of its judg- 
ment, and the immensity of its resources redeems from such over- 
whelming ruin as that in which he by such errors as these involved his 
whole Army. That he may still maintain his authority in France it 
would be presumptous to deny. That he may again collect armies and 
win battles is altogether possible, and hy errors not unlike his own 
may be rendered hereafter even probable. But in the general tenour 
of human history, when Fortune has once turned her back upon those 
to whom she has been most lavish of her favours, she never takes them 
to her arms again. A Cast off favourite must look for any thing but 
kindness. 

In the annihilation of that immense host, which but half a year 
since, burst upon the Russian Empire, Providence has certainly re- 
served the greatest and most essential agency to itself. But in the con- 
duct of the Sovereign, of the Nobility, of the Citizens, of the Peasantry 
and of the Army of this Nation under the heavy trial which they have 
been called to endure, it would be the highest injustice to deny that 
there has been little to censure, and much to applaud and admire. The 



•=80 in the clerical copy, but Dinaburg (Diinaburg) is probably meant. 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 43 

Spirit of Patriotism has burnt with the purest and most vivid flame in 
every class of the community. The exertions of the Nation have been 
almost unparralleld, the greatest sacrifices have been made cheerfully 
and spontaneously. I wrote you before the War began that it was 
anticipated with some dejection and despondency. But from the 
moment it began scarcely a symptom of that kind has ever betrayed 
itself among any class of the Russian People. In the most trying ex- 
tremity they have been calm and collected ; deeply anxious, but uni- 
formly confident and sanguine in their hopes of the result. 

On the 19th. of December the Emperor Alexander left this City 
and on the 22d. arrived at the Head Quarters of his Army at Willna.* 
He is still with them, and there is no present expectation of his return. 
The Chancellor Count Romanzoff has not yet followed him. A com- 
mercial Treaty with England is talked of among the Merchants, but 
is not even in discussion between the Governments. 
I am with great respect 
Sir, 
Your very humble and obedt. Servt. 

John Quincy Adams. 

Vni. John Quincy Adams to James Monroe;. 
(Despatches, Russia, Volume 2, Despatch No. 139.) 

The Secretary of State of the United States. 

Ghent 5. September 1814 
Sir. 

On the 25th. ulto. we sent into the British Plenipotentiaries, our 
answer to their Note, and had every reason to expect that before this 
day the negotiations would have been terminated. Two days after- 
wards Mr Bayard was explicitly told in a conversation with Mr Goul- 
burn that their reply would be sent to us without delay, and that they 
should have no occasion, previous to sending it, for any further refer- 
ence to their Government. On Wednesday the 31st: Mr. Baker called 
upon Mr Gallatin, with an apology for a delay of a very few days, the 
British Plenipotentiaries, having concluded in consideration of the 
great importance of the thing, to send their Note to England, for the 
approbation of their Government before they transmitted it to us. The 
next morning I had a conversation with Mr Goulburn, which convinced 
me that the sole object of this reference was to give a greater appear- 
ance of deliberation and solemnity to the rupture. 

Some of the particulars of this Conversation, render it in my 
mind sufficiently interesting for the substance of it to be reported to 

*Vilna. 



44 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

you. I began it by expressing some satisfaction at having learnt their 
reference to their Government ; as it tended to encourage the hope that 
they would reconsider some part of their proposals to the United States. 
He did not think it probable — and in the whole tenor of his discourse 
I perceived not only a spirit of inflexible adherence to the terms which 
we have rejected, but under the cover of a personal deportment suffi- 
ciently courteous, a rancorous animosity against America, which dis- 
closed that there was nothing like Peace at the heart. 

The great argument to which he continually recurred, in support 
of the Indian Boundary, and the exclusive military possession of the 
Lakes by the British was the necessity of them for the security of 
Canada. The American Government, he said had manifested the inten- 
tion and the determination of conquering Canada. " And, excepting 
you (said he) I believe it was the astonishment of the whole World, 
that Canada had not been conquered at the very outset of the War. 
Nothing could have saved it, but the excellent dispositions and military 
arrangements of the Governor who commanded there. We were then 
not prepared for an attack upon that Province with such an over- 
whelming force — ^But now, we have had time to send reinforcements, 
and I do not think you will conquer it. In order however to guard 
against the same thing in future it is necessary to make a barrier 
against the American settlements, upon which neither party shall be 
permitted to encroach. The Indians are but a secondary object. As 
the allies of Great Britain, she must include them in in the Peace, as in 
making Peace, with other Powers, she included Portugal, as her ally. 
But when the boundary is once defined it is immaterial whether the 
Indians are upon it or not. Let it be a desart. But we shall know 
that you cannot come upon us to attack us, without crossing it. The 
stipulation to maintain no armed force on the Lakes, is for the same 
purpose — the security of Canada. I can see nothing dishonourable or 
humiliating in it. The United States can never be in any danger of 
invasion from Canada. The disproportion of force is too great. But 
Canada must always be in the most imminent danger of invasion from 
the United-States, unless guarded by some such stipulations as are now 
demanded. It can be nothing to the United-States to agree not to arm 
upon the Lakes ; since they never had actually done it before the pres- 
ent War. Why should they object to disarming there, where they had 
never before had a gun floating?" — I answered that the Conquest of 
Canada had never been an object of the War, on the part of the United 
States. It has been invaded by us in Consequence of the War, as they 
themselves had invaded many parts of the United-States. It was an 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 45 

effect and not a Cause of the War. I thought with him that we should 
not now conquer it. But I had no doubt we should, and that at no ver}^ 
distant period, if any such terms as they now required should ever be 
submitted to, by us. The American Government I said, never had 
declared the intention of conquering Canada. He referred to General 
Hull's Proclamtion. I answered that the American Government was 
not responsible for that. It was no uncommon thing for commanding 
Officers to issue proclamations which were disavowed by their Govern- 
ment, of which a very recent example had occurr'd, in a Proclamation 
of Admiral Cochrane. He said that the American Government had not 
disavowed Hull's proclamation, and that the British Government had 
not disavowed any proclamation of Admiral Cochrane's. I replied that 
the American Government had never been called upon either to avow 
or disavow Hull's Proclamation, but I had seen in a printed Statement 
of the debates in the House of Commons, that Lord Castlereagh had 
been called upon to say whether Admiral Cochrane's Proclamation had 
been authorized or not, and had answered that it was not. He said 
that Lord Castlereagh had been asked whether a Proclamation of Ad- 
miral Cochrane's, encouraging the negroes to revolt, had been authorized 
by the government, and had answered in the negative ; that is, that no 
Proclamation, encouraging the negroes to revolt had been authorized. 
But the Proclamation of Admiral Cochrane referred to, gave no such 

encouragement : there was not a word about negroes in it It merely 

offered employment or a settlement in the British Colonies to such per- 
sons as might be disposed to leave the United-States — ^I asked him 
what was the import of the term free, used in the Proclamation, in con- 
nection with the offer of settlements? he answered the question with 
some hesitation, but admitted that it might be understood as having 
reference to slaves. I admitted on my part that the word " negroes," 
was not in the proclamation, but remarked that he must be as sensible, 
as I was, that it could have reference only to them. That certainly no 
person in America could mistake its meaning. It was unquestionably 
intended for the negroes, and corresponded sufficiently with the prac- 
tice of others of their naval officers. It was known that some of them, 
under similar inducements, had taken away blacks, who had after- 
wards been sold in the West-India Islands — Upon this Mr: Goulburn, 
with an evident struggle to suppress a feeling of strong irritation said 
"that he could undertake to deny in the most unqualified terms — ^The 
character of British naval Officers, was universally known . . . their 
generosity and humanity could never be contested ; and besides, that 
since the Act of Pariiament of 181 1. the act of selling any man for a 



46 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

Slave, unless real slaves, from one British Island to another, was felony 
without benefit of Clergy." I replied that without contesting the char- 
acter of any class of People generally, it was certain there would be in 
all classes, individuals capable of committing actions, of which others 
would be ashamed. That, at a great distance from the eye and controul 
of the Government, acts were often done with impunity, which would 
be severely punished, nearer home. That the facts I had stated to 
him were among the objects which we were instructed to present for 
Consideration, if the Negotiation should proceed, and he might in that 
case find it more susceptible of proof than he was aware — He thought 
it impossible ; but that it was one of those charges against their officers, 
of which there were many, originating only in the spirit of hostility, 
and totally destitute of foundation. 

With respect to the Indian allies, I remarked that there was no 
analogy between them and the case of Portugal. The Peace would of 
itself include all the Indians included within the British limits; but the 
stipulation which might be necessary for the protection of Indians, sit- 
uated within the Boundaries of the United States, who had taken the 
British side in the War, was rather in the nature of an amnesty than 
of a provision for allies. It resembled more the case of Subjects who 
in cases of invasion took part with the invaders, as had sometimes hap- 
pened to Great-Britain in Ireland. He insisted that the Indians must 
be considered as Independent Nations ; for that we ourselves made 
Treaties with them, and acknowledged boundaries of their Territories. 
I said that wherever they ivoiild form settlements, and cultivate Lands, 
their possessions were undoubtedly to be respected, and always were 
respected by the United-States. That some of them had become 
civilized in a considerable degree ; the Cherokees for example, who had 
permanent habitations, and a state of property like our own. But the 
greater part of the Indians, never could be prevailed upon to adopt 
this mode of life. Their habits, and attachments, and prejudices, were 
so averse to any settlement that they could not reconcile themselves; 
to any other condition than that of wandering hunters. It was impos- 
sible for such People ever to be said to have Possessions. Their only 
right upon Land was a right to use it as hunting grounds; and when 
those Lands where they hunted became necessary or convenient for 
the purposes of settlement, the system adopted by the United-States 
was, by amicable arrangement with them to compensate them for re- 
nouncing the right of hunting upon them, and for removing to remoter 
regions better suited to their purposes and mode of life. This system 
of the United States was an improvement upon the former practice 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 47 

of all European Nations, including the British. The original settlers 
of New-England had set the first example of this liberality towards the 
Indians, which was afterwards followed by the founder of Pennsyl- 
vania. Between it, and taking the Lands for nothing, or exterminating 
the Indians who had used them there was no alternative. To condemn 
vast regions of territory to perpetual barrenness and solitude, that a 
few hundred Savages might find wild beasts to hunt upon it was a 
species of game-law, that a Nation descended from Britons would 
never endure. It was as incompatible with the moral as with the 
physical nature of things. If Great-Britain meant to preclude forever 
the People of the United-States from settling and cultivating those 
Territories, she must not think of doing it by a Treaty. She must for- 
mally undertake and accomplish their utter extermination. If the 
government of the United States should ever submit to such a stipula- 
tion, which I hoped they would not, all its force, and all that of Britain 
combined with it, would not suffice to carry it long into execution. It 
was opposing a feather to a torrent. The Population of the United 
States in 1810 passed seven millions. At this hour it undoubtedly 
passed eight. As it continued to increase in such proportions, was it 
in human experience, or in human power, to check its progress by a 
bond of paper, purporting to exclude posterity from the natural means 
of subsistence which they would derive from the cultivation of the soil ? 
Such a Treaty instead of closing the old sources of dissension would 
only open new ones. A War thus finished would immediately be fol- 
lowed by another, and Great-Britain would ultimately find that she 
must substitute the project of exterminating the whole American Peo- 
ple, to that of opposing against them her Barrier of Savages. The 
proposal of dooming a large extent of lands, naturally fertile to be for- 
ever desert, by compact, would be a violation of the Laws of Nature 
and of Nations, as recognized by the most distinguished Writers on 
Public Law. It would be an outrage upon Providence ; which gave 
the earth to man for cultivation, and made the tillage of the ground, the 
condition of his Nature and the Law of his existence. ..." What, 
(said Mr Goldburn) [sic] is it then in the inevitable nature of things, 
that the United-States must conquer Canada " ? . . . "No" . . . "But 
what security then can Great-Britain have for 'her Possession of it"? 
..." If Great-Britain does not think a liberal and amicable course 
of policy towards America would be the best security, as it certainly 
would, she must rely upon her general strength, upon the superiority 
of her power in other parts of her relations with America ; upon the 
power which she has upon another element, to indemnify herself by 



48 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

sudden impression upon American interests, more defenceless against 
her superiority than Canada against ours, and in their amount far more 
valuable than Canada ever was or ever will be " — He said that Great- 
Britain had no intention to carry on a War, either of extermination or 
of Conquest; but recurred again to our superior force, and to the 
necessity of providing against it. He added that in Canada they never 
took any of the Indian Lands, and even the Government (meaning the 
Provincial Government) was prohibited from granting them — ^That 
there were among the Indians, very civilized People ; there was par- 
ticularly one man whom he knew, Norton, who commanded some of 
the Indians, engaged on the British side in the War, and who was a 
very intelligent, and well-informed man. But the removing of the 
Indians from their Lands to others, was one of the very things of which 
Great-Britain complained — That it drove them over into their Provinces 
and made them annoy and encroach upon the Indians within their 
limits — iThis was a new idea to me — I told him I had never heard any 
complaint of that kind before : and I supposed that a remedy for it 
would very easily be found. . . . He made no reply, and seemed as 
if in the pressure for an argument he had advanced more than he was 
inclined to maintain. It was the same, with regard to the proposal that 
we should keep no armed force on or near the Lakes of Canada. He 
did not admit that there was any thing humiliating to the United States ; 
or unusual in it ; but he evaded repeatedly answering the question how 
he or the English Nation would feel if the proposition were made to 
them of binding themselves by such a stipulation. I finally said that 
if he did not feel that there was any thing dishonourable to the party 
submitting to such terms, it was not a subject susceptible of argument. 
I could assure him that we and our Nation would feel it to be such. 
That such stipulations were indeed often extorted from the weakness 
of a vanquished enemy ; but they were always felt to be dishonourable, 
and had certainly occasioned more Wars than they had ever prevented — 
It was true as he had said. The United States had never prior to the 
War, had an armed naval force upon the Lakes. I thought it infinitely 
probable, that if Great-Britain had said nothing upon the subject in this 
Negotiation, the United States would not have retained a naval force 
there after the restoration of Peace — It was more than I could say, 
that this anxiety manifested by Great-Britain to disarm them, would 
not operate as a warning to them to keep a competent portion of the 
force now created, even during Peace, and whether his Government by 
advancing the proposal to dismantle, will not eventually fix the pur- 
pose of the United States to remain always armed, even upon the Lakes. 
The whole of this Conversation, was on both sides perfectly cool 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 49 

and temperate in the manner ; though sometimes very earnest on mine, 
and sometimes with a hurry of reply and an embarrassment of ex- 
pression, on his, indicating an effort to controul the disclosure of feel- 
ings under strong excitement. The most remarkable instance of this 
was upon the intimation from me, that some of their naval Officers had 
enticed away numbers of our black people, who had afterwards been 
sold in the West-India Islands. — I stated the fact on the authority of 
your Instructions to the present joint mission of 28 January last, and 
persisted in asserting it, on the assurance that there is proof of it, in 
possession of the Department of State. In the present state of public 
opinion in England, respecting the traffic in slaves, I was well aware of 
the impression which the mere statement would make upon Mr Goul- 

burn The rupture of this Negotiation will render it unnecessary for 

us to possess the proof, which it was your intention at the date of your 
instructions of 28 Jany : to furnish us, but at any future attempt to 
treat for Peace, it will be important to produce it, and I would even 
suggest the expediency of giving as much publicity as possible to it, in 
Europe, while the War continues. 

The avowal of Admiral Cochrane's proclamation, and the explana- 
tion of Lord Castlereagh's disavowal of it in the house of commons, 
were remarkable as examples of the kind of reasoning to which the 
British Government is willing to resort. Whether the distinction taken 
in this case really belonged to Lord Castlereagh, or whether erroneously 
ascribed to him by Mr Goulburn, I cannot say. . But Mr Goulburn 
was present in the house of Commons, when the debate referred to 
took place. 

The strongest feature in the general complexion of his discourse, 
was the inflexible adherence to the proposed Indian Boundary line. 
But the pretext upon which this proposition had in the first instance 
been placed, the pacification with the Indians, and their future security 
was almost abandoned — avowed to be a secondary and very subordinate 
object — ^The security of Canada was now substituted as the prominent 
motive. But the great and real one, though not of a nature ever to be 
acknowledged, was occasionally discernable through all its veils. This 
was no other than a profound and rankling Jealousy at the rapid in- 
crease of population and of settlements in the United States ; an impo- 
tent longing to thwart their progress and to stunt their growth. With 
this temper prevailing in the British Councils, it is not in the hour of 
their success that we can expect to obtain a peace upon equal terms 
of equal justice or of reciprocity. 
I am, with great Respect, Sir, your very humble and obedt : Servt. 

John Quincy Adams. 

P. S. — We have just received the reply to our Note. 



50 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

IX. John Quincy Adams to James Monroe. 

(Despatches, Russia, Volume 2, Despatch No. 140.) 

The Secretary of State, of the United States. 

Ghent 10 October 1814. 
Sir. 

Since the departure of Mr Dallas, with the dispatches of the joint 
mission, by the John Adams, our Conferences with the British Plenipo- 
tentiaries, have been suspended, and all our official intercourse with 
them 'has been in writing. 

A copy of their first Note, dated 19. August, was forwarded by 
Mr: Dallas. On the 24th. of the same Month we answered that Note, 
rejecting in the most explicit terms the proposed definitive Indian 
Boundary, the cession of Territory to Great-Britain, and the demand 
of a stipulation on our part to dismantle the fortifications on our fron- 
tiers, and to maintain no naval force upon the Lakes. 

On the 5th : of September we received their second Note, dated the 
4th: It insisted on all the demands made in the first, but manifested a 
disposition to modify some parts of them, and to abandon others — 
We answered it on the 9th. They had given us the alternatives of con- 
tinuing the Negotiation upon their exposition of their Views ; of break- 
ing it oflf ; or of referring to our Government, for further Instructions — 
You will recollect however that in their first Note they had warned 
us, that if we should refer to our Government, they would not be 
bound to abide by their present offers, but would vary their demands 
according as the circumstances of the War might warrant — Our an- 
swer to their alternatives was that we desired to continue the Negotia- 
tion provided they would abandon the demands which we had already 
rejected. 

Their third Note was dated on the 19th : of September, and re- 
ceived by us on the 20th : It abandoned the definitive Indian Boundary 
as a Sine qua non, but expressed an intention to propose a temporary 
Boundary, for discussion — It abandoned apparently the demand for the 
exclusive military occupation of the Lakes ; but announced the purpose 
of making a proposal on this subject so liberal and generous that they 
thought it could not be refused. But they presented as a new Sine qua 
non that the Indian allies of Great-Britain should be included in the 
pacification. 

Our answer was delivered to them on the 26th : of September. It 
proposed an Article, in the Nature of an Amnesty; that no persons, 
whether Citizens, Subjects, or Indians of either party, should be 
molested or annoyed, in person or property for any part taken by them 
in the War. 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 5 1 

On Saturday Evening the 8th : instant, we received their fourth 
Note, enclosing a proposed Article as their ultimatum. It provides 
that on the Ratification of the Peace, all hostilities against the Indian 
Tribes or Nations engaged in the War shall cease on .both sides ; pro- 
vided the Indians shall on their part cease from hostilities on the notifi- 
cation of the Peace to them. And that they shall be restored to all the 
rights, privileges and possessions as they held them in 181 1 before the 
commencement of the War. 

We do not send you copies of all these Papers by the present occa- 
sion, because we expect to dispatch a Messenger to you in a very few 
days, when we shall have prepared our answer to this last Note. Al- 
though I am not certain that the Negotiation will close at this stage, 
and although the British Government have abandoned so much and 
such objectionaJble parts of their Sine qua non, I see no reason for 
altering the opinion expressed to you at the close of our joint Letter 
of 19. August. 

Mr Boyd arrived at Bordeaux on the 17th. at Paris on the 23d. 
and here on the 29th. ultimo. He is now at Amsterdam ; we expect his 
return in the course of a few days. We have applied for a Passport 
for the return of the Transit. 

We received the duplicates of your dispatches of 25 and 27. June, 
from the British Plenipotentiaries. But your Letter of 9 July was 
not with them. 
I am with perfect respect. Sir, your very humble and obedt : Servt. 

John Quincy Adams. 

X. John Quincy Adams to James Monroe. 

(Despatches, Russia, Volume 2, Despatch No. 143.) 
The Secretary of State of the United States. 

Ghent 20. November 1814. 
Sir. 

The Chauncey sailed on the first of this Month from Ostend, and 
by her we transmitted to you, copies of all the official papers which 
had passed between the British Plenipotentiaries and us. The interval 
that had elapsed since the departure of the John Adams was so long, 
that I am apprehensive you may have thought it unnecessarily pro- 
tracted. It was owing to the reluctance with which the Supercargo of 
the Chauncey came to the determination of proceeding to America ; 
and to the dilatory proceedings of the British Admiralty, upon our 
applications for Passports for Vessels, to convey our dispatches. On 
the 7th : of September we had by a Note to the British Plenipotentiaries, 



52 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

requested them to obtain such a Passport for the Schooner Herald, 
lying at Amsterdam. There were a number of persons, Citizens of the 
United States, who were desirous of returning in that vessel as Passen- 
gers, and we gave their names, with the intimation of a wish that they 
might be inserted, as Passengers on the Passport — We have not to this 
day received any answer from the Admiralty, upon this application. 

When Mr Boyd arrived here, we immediately addressed a Note to 
the Plenipotentiaries, asking a Passport for the Transit to return to 
Ihe tJnited States with our dispatches. At the same time we informed 
them that you had been obliged to dispatch her without any Passport, and 
sent them copies of your note to Lord Castlereagh, enclosing the dupli- 
cates of your Letters of 25 and 27 June to us, and of Admiral Cock- 
burn's Letter to you, alleging his Commander's orders for refusing a 
Passport for a vessel in July, because he judged it sufficient to have 
given one for another vessel the preceding March — and we intimated 
to them that their officers had thus to the utmost extent of their power 
precluded our Government from transmitting to us any Instructions 
subsequent to their knowledge of the important changes m the affairs 
of Europe, which had so essential a bearing upon the objects of our 
Negotiation. The Circumstance was the more remarkable, because the 
British Plenipotentiaries had in one of their Notes made it a subject 
of reproach to the Government of the United States, that they had not 
furnished us with Instructions after being informed of the pacification 
of Europe. We had indeed told them at the Conference of the 9th : of 
August that we had then received Instructions dated at the close of 
June. But this had altogether escaped their recollection ; so that while 
Admiral Cockburn was writing you that his superior Officer had decided 
that there was no further occasion for our Government to instruct us, 
until they should receive dispatches from us, the British Government 
was taking it for granted that we had received no Instructions, and 
was charging it as an indication that the American Government was 
not sincerely disposed to Peace. 

It was nearly five weeks after we made this Communication, asking 
a Passport for the Transit, when we received it. The Passport requires 
that she should go in Ballast, and with no other Passenger than a bearer 
of dispatches from us. No answer has been given us, either in relation 
to Admiral Cockburn's Letter to you, refusing a Cartel, or to your 
Note to Lord Castlereagh, enclosing the duplicates. We received the 
Passport for the Transit only the day before the Chauncey sailed, so 
that the length of time, between the dispatching of Mr Dallas and that 
of Mr Connell, and of course the long period which you will probably 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 53 

be without direct advices from us, will have been owing to obstacles in- 
dependent of our controul. 

From the nature of the British pretensions and demands as dis- 
closed in the first Note from their Plenipotentiaries to us, and from 
the tone with which they were brought forward, both in that Note, and 
in the Conference of the day on which it is dated, we had concluded 
that the rupture of the Negotiation would immediately ensue, and ex- 
pected to have been discharged from our attendance at this place, before 
the first of September. The British Plenipotentiaries after receiving 
our answer to their first Note appeared to entertain the same expecta- 
tion, and if the sincerity of their conversation can be implicitly trusted, 
they were not altogether in the secret of their own Government. It 
soon became apparent from the course pursued by them, that the inten- 
tion of the British Cabinet was, neither to break off the Negotiation, 
nor to conclude the Peace. They expected that a powerful impression 
would be made in America by the armaments naval and military which 
they had sent and were continuing to send. At the same time the re- 
sult of the Congress at Vienna was a subject of some uncertainty. The 
expediency of another campaign in America might depend upon its 
issue. Success in either hemisphere would warrant them in raising 
their demands at their own discretion. Failure on either or even on 
both sides would still leave them with a certainty of a Peace as favour- 
able as they could have any reasonable pretence to require. They have 
accordingly confined their plenipotentiaries to the task of wasting 
time. After spending more than two Months upon a preliminary 
Article, which ultimately bore scarcely a feature of its original aspect, 
they twice successively evaded our request for an interchange of the 
project of a Treaty. — They have at last started it as a point of Etiquette, 
and appear to consider it as an advantage to receive the first draft 
instead of giving it. We have now endeavoured to gratify them in both 
respects. We have sent them our Project, and are now waiting for 
their's. In the mean time. Lord Liverpool has avowed in the debates 
on the Regent's Speech that their demands and proposals are to be 
regulated by circumstances, which implies that they are not yet pre- 
pared to conclude. One of the latest ministerial papers announces that 
the negotiation is not to succeed and that their Plenipotentiaries are 
very shortly to return to England. Of the latter part of this informa- 
tion I much doubt, for although the progress of the Negotiations at 
Vienna, daily strengthens the expectation that it will end without any 
immediate disturbance of the Peace of Europe, it does not yet promise 
a state of permanent tranquillity, which would make the policy of con- 
tinuing at all Events the War with America, unquestionable. 



54 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

I have received, and shall forward ;by the Transit, a packet of 
dispatches for you, from Mr Harris at St: Petersburg. It doubtless 
contains copies of the Note which he addressed to the Imperial depart- 
ment of foreign affairs, in relation to Admiral Cochrane's Proclama- 
tion of blockade of 25. April last. I know not whether it is to be re- 
gretted that Mr: Haris's Note was not presented until after the Em- 
peror's departure for Vienna. He writes me that Mr: Weydemeyer 
at his suggestion had written to Count Nesselrode, requesting him to 
communicate directly to me the Emperor's answer on the subject of the 
Note — But I have not heard from the Count. 

The popular sentiment throughout Europe has been and still is 
that the United States must sink in the present struggle against the 
whole power of Great-Britain. And such is the British ascendancy 
over all the Governments of Europe that even where the feelings of the 
People incline to favour us, they dare not yet unequivocally express 
them. The late Events in America, as far as they are known, have 
tended to produce some change in this respect. The destruction of the 
public buildings at Washington has been publicly reprobated in some 
of the French Gazettes, but it has been defended in others. Its general 
effect upon the public opinion has been unfavourable to the English; 
but the impression of their defeat at Baltimore, and especially of the 
retreat from Plattsburg has been much deeper. We shall have no 
valuable friends in Europe, until we have proved that we can defend 
ourselves without them. There will be friends enough, if we can main- 
tain our own cause by our resources. 

We have also received by two several occasions Letters tp us, 
and dispatches for you, from Mr Sumter at Rio de Janeiro. They were 
sent by the Portugese Minister who attends the Congress at Vienna, 
and by Count Pahlen who is returning to Russia. Mr Sumter's dis- 
patches for you, were left open for our perusal, and we shall forward 
them by the Transit. 

I am, with great respect, Sir, your very humble and obedt Servt 

John Quincy Adams. 

XL Jonathan RusselIv to Robert Smith. 

(Despatches, France, Volume 12.) 

Paris 4th Decern 1810 
Sir 

I have already written you several letters by this opportunity but 
as the Commodore Rogers will have to wait on account of the westerly 
winds for the next spring tides I shall I trust be able to get this letter 
on board of her. 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 55 

The efficient motive of the Government here for placing this ship 
at my disposal was to procure a safe conveyance for their new minister 
who takes passage in her for the United States. 

Altho' Mr. Serurier professes to he well disposed towards the United 
States and probably is really so — yet he is devoted to the service of his 
master and this devotion will form the rule for his conduct. Indeed the 
strange influence, which the Emperor exercises over those whom he em- 
ploys, appears to merge all they may possess of suavity or benevolence in 
a zeal to execute his unbending will. He has no favorite or confident — 
he neither loves or trusts those whom he finds it necessary to use but 
considering himself alone and concentrating within himself all his affec- 
tions and all his projects he braves and he despises the opinions of 
others. His Ministers and his Marshals approach him — not to give 
their counsel but to receive his orders. The most intrepid among them 
shrink from his regard and a word from him confounds alike their 
wisdom and their courage. He has no policy but his power — and to 
make this power felt and feared he is obliged often to display it in acts 
of oppression and injustice. Whatever the Minister of Exterior, who 
is the only channel of communication for foreign nations, submits to 
him must remain till he chooses to take it into consideration and to 
give it an answer. If it he forgotten among the multiplicity of other 
concerns it is dangerous to recal it to his attention — for if thus recalled 
it is at the hazard of his displeasure and his injustice. I doubt not 
that many representations have passed sub silencio merely because the 
minister has feared to remind him of their existence. Indeed the awe 
which all about him manifestly feel is inconceivable to those who are 
not familiar with the excesses and extravagancies of a man possessed 
of absolute power and actuated by violent and unmanagable passions. 
Our relations with a country governed in this way must, I fear, at best 
be precarious and uncertain. For I humbly apprehend that our con- 
fidence in a foreign government ought not to be measured solely by 
its professions — or by the inaction or revocation of a few decrees but 
chiefly by the organization of that Government and the character of 
those who exercise its powers. And what security can we have for the 
permanency of any arrangement which depends on the single will of a 
spoilt child of fortune who regards neither the sanctity of principle or 
the decency of forms. 

No one here except the Emperor knows if the Berlin and Milan 
decrees be absolutely revoked or not and no one dares enquire of him 
concerning them. The general opinion of those with whom I have 
conversed on the subject is that they are so revoked. There are indeed 



56 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

among those who entertain this opinion several counsellors of state — 
but this is of little importance as the construction which the Emperor 
may choose to adopt will alone prevail and the most hardy of his states- 
men will not presume to consider it to be incorrect. 

The New Orleans packet lately arrived at Bordeaux is still under 
quarantine as a contagious disease is said to prevail at Gibralter the 
port from which she came. I still believe that her case will be so man- 
aged as to procrastinate a decision until it be known whether the con- 
dition presented to the United States has been performed or not. The 
general course of proceedure and which I presume will be pursued with 
regard to her is a temporary sequester while the papers can be trans- 
mitted to Paris to be examined and decided on by the council of com- 
merce here. As this is now the ordinary practice it may satisfactorily 
explain why notice of the revocation of the decrees has not been given 
to the custom-houses — as a knowledge of this fact could be of no im- 
portance to those who are not qualified to act upon it. 

I have seen the condemnation of the Whampoa which was pro- 
nounced on the 7th of November by the Council of prizes under the 
Milan decree. The Whampoa had long been in the ports of Holland 
and her trial was pending for months before the first of November — 
yet as that decree was to cease to operate after that period and no reser- 
vation was made for pronouncing confiscation altho' previously in- 
curred — ^we have a right perhaps to consider its revocation to be entire 
and that not a single fragment of it survived on which to found an act 
either of seizure or confiscation. I have however forborne to make any 
representation to this government on the subject because I considered 
it to be indiscreet at this moment when the revocation itself was not 
well assured to enter into a controversy about its extent. When we 
have sufficient proof of the existence of the principal object we can, 
should policy require it, contend with safety for the mere incidents 
which belong to it. 

Altho' from a great variety of circumstances I am induced to be- 
leive that the continental system is not viewed by the Government here 
'exactly as it was on the 5th of August last yet I also believe that should 
the proclamation of the President under the law of the first of May be 
issued — and received here — within a reasonable time — the Berlin and 
Milan decrees will not again be executed. As however this system 
appears now to be relied on as an efficient instrument for the destruc- 
tion of British power — and as these decrees formed so essential a part 
of it — it is to be apprehended that their reluctant repeal will be followed 
by measures of equal violence to replace them. All that we can hope 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 57 

for is that these measures may be so modified as not to violate our 
rights however unfavourable they may be to our interests. 

British power is regarded as the offspring of British commerce 
and the attempt to destroy the former by the destruction of the latter 
will not be abandonned from a repugnance to involve the trade of 
neutral nations in the ruin. That this terrible system has progressively 
excluded from almost every part of the continent the flag of Britain and 
has pursued — and seized — and confiscated and burnt her merchandize 
and her manufactures not merely in the magazines at the seaports but 
in the inland hovels of Germany and the cottages of the Alps and 
thereby produced commercial distress and embarrassment at London 
cannot be denied — nor can it be denied that from the same causes the 
stocks in England have fallen and that the course of exchange from 
every part of the continent continues to be against her. But while 
France triumphantly boasts the effect of her system on her adversary 
she attempts to conceal or affects to disbeleive its effect upon herself. 
If the foreign commerce of England be diminished her own and that 
of her alhes is absolutely annihilated. If the house of Goldsmith was 
deranged at London — the house of Simon at Paris and the house of 
Schmitz of Amsterdam — both equally eminent — ^are bankrupt. Nor have 
the French funds risen — ^on the contrary in spite of all the victories and 
all the plunder with which they are supported they continue to decline. 
The rate of exchange too is affected as well by the want of confidence 
and want of money on the continent as by the balance of trade between 
the continent and England. If indeed the former export more than she 
receives this relative state of trade proves nothing for the fact is that 
her positive amount of exports, if Russia be excepted, has dwindled 
almost to nothing and the industry which furnished it is perishing. 
Even this course of exchange so vaunted as the evidence of continental 
prosperity adds in fact to continental distress for it is at the loss of the 
drawer and discourages exportation. 

While however I believe that the continental system produces 
much more misery to the continent than to England I also believe that 
it will not be abandonned until the maritime system of the latter — a 
system founded on the same principles of pride — violence and injustice 
be renounced. France from the habits of her people and the character 
of her government is, notwithstanding her sufferings, pre-eminently 
qualified for perseverance in this conflict of commercial privation. 
Commerce with her being at best but a secondary branch of industry 
may be suspended without essentially affecting the strength or the re- 
sources of the nation — and there is a power — whatever distress this 



58 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

suspension mig-ht produce — to stifle every groan and arrest every con- 
vulsion. On the other hand the commerce of England is the soul 
which animates her — it is her nerve and sinew — her sensibility and her 
strength and should it perish her national existence must perish with 
it — -Nor will the temper of her people long brook experiments which 
endanger it and of which they feel the evils without regarding the 
policy and the most sturdy of her ministers will find themselves obliged 
to respect this temper. It is from this view of the subject that I am 
induced to believe that France will not be the first to recede from the 
system — ^^and no motive can have less influence with her than a regard 
for our rights. She may indeed admit occasional modifications in order 
to procure the conveniences of our intercourse. But on these we can 
place no reliance — they form no part of her permanent plan and prob- 
ably will not be permitted to survive the wants which produce them. 

For instance — the price of wheat in France has doubled within a 
few months past. This is owing to a scarcity of that article occasioned 
partly by an indifferent harvest and partly by the great demand for the 
armies in Spain. So entirely from the latter cause has Languedoc been 
drained that many of its inhabitants send to Paris for bread. In this 
state of things an unofficial enquiry has been made of me to ascertain 
if the American merchants would receive French permits to supply 
the south with provisions. To this enquiry I replied that our mer- 
chants like all others would act as upon calculation they considered it 
to be for their interest — but that I was of opinion that my government 
would not in the existing state of things countenance a partial inter- 
course of this kind. I further observed that if the Berlin and Milan 
decrees were ofif special permits could not be necessary — and that if 
they were not ofif I should not feel at liberty to listen to any new 
propositions without instructions from the President. I must con- 
fess that I heard with regret this enquiry as it seemed to imply that 
we could not be suffered even to feed their hungry without special 
permission. It explains however the character of the occasional modi- 
fications of the general system which we may expect in our favour. Of 
the same nature is the decree of the ler of November permitting the 
produce of Java and the Mauritius to be imported direct to France in 
American vessels on paying one fourth only of the ordinary duties. In a 
conversation I had with the Duke of Cadore relative to this decree — 
and in which I wished to ascertain if the word direct applied to the 
nature of the voyage or merely to the route in which it was performed 
— (that is if American vessels might touch in the United States with- 
out breaking bulk) — ^and if the ports of Holland were to be considered 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 59 

under that decree as ports of France — I could obtain no other answer 
than that the decree spoke for itself. The language however which it 
speaks is not very explicit and promises no national advantage to the 
United States but is intended merely to tempt adventurous individuals 
among us to undertake for the convenience of France what her subjects 
at the moment are incapable of performing. 

The indulgencies however which she grants to us, and which she 
nicely measures by her necessities, are greater than any which she 
allows to her allies. On them she ruthlessly inflicts all the calamities 
of her system while she reserves to herself alone all the relaxations by 
which its operation can be mitigated. The faculty of granting permits 
and licences is her exclusive prerogative and the commerce they occa- 
sion she severely monopolizes. By this mode of proceedure she pre- 
vents abuses which would undoubtedly be practiced to the benefit of 
her enemy — she favors her immediate subjects — and by forcing through 
her ports every article of foreign .growth consumed on the continent 
she completely engrosses the whole revenue arising from impost. To 
this mode of executing her system I doubt not she will hereafter most 
rigidly adhere — and to it sooner or later all the powers of the continent 
will .be compelled to subscribe. Of all these powers, if we except 
Austria who has no ports, Russia and Sweden even now are the only 
ones who are not completely subjected to it — and these powers will 
not long form an exception. It is probable indeed that even at this 
moment the resistance of Sweden is at an end. I have just been told 
by a person officially informed of the fact that on the 12th of Novr. 
the French Ambassador at the Court of Sweden made a positive de- 
mand that war should be declared against England within five days — 
and intimated that in case of a refusal he should immediately leave the 
country — an advertisement of the Swedish consul at Copenhagen on 
the 24th Novr. warning, in consequence of orders he had received, all 
Swedish vessels in the Danish ports to guard against capture by the 
English, renders it probable that the demand of the French Govern- 
ment has already been acceded to. This demand was no doubt made 
with a determination of giving to the continental system a more com- 
plete and efficient operation — for the war which Sweden can wage 
against England, in a military point of view, can be of little importance. 
Russia is then the only power which remains to adopt the measure 
and she must promptly decide on hostilities against commerce or against 
France — she must confiscate or fight and there is much reason to be- 
lieve that she will elect the former. The promotion indeed of a French 
prince to the throne of Sweden appeared at first to alarm the Russian 



6o DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

Court — at least the Russian Ambassy here were startled at it. Pro- 
fessions of amity from this Government and strong assurances of the 
undisturbed possession of Findland [sic] joined to the vanity of their 
own victories over the Turks have again restored their confidence in 
this Government and disposed them to aid in its policy. They must be 
aware that their only means of securing their conquests in Turkey is 
by condescension to France. It is the foible of the Russian Government 
to overrate their acquisitions in that quarter and to be willing to make 
the most serious sacrifices in order to retain them. 

The first fruits of the continental system in Russia, Denmark and 
Sweden will be national bankruptcy. The Bashaw principle of finance 
— plunder and extortion — which appears to be the handmaid of this 
system cannot long delay the evil and will aggravate it when it hap- 
pens. Denmark and Sweden are indeed involuntary victims and will 
struggle to the last to preserve some character — the courts of the for- 
mer have lately acquitted many American vessels and in some cases 
allowed respectable damages. Prussia altho she still retain [s] the shadow 
of sovereignty does not in fact enjoy a single one of its attributes. 
After an indiscriminate sequester of all property imported into her 
dominions she has as indiscriminately confiscated it. The whole, among 
which there is much belonging to American citizens, is ordered to be 
sold and the proceeds, it is said, will be applied to discharge the arrears 
of contributions due to France. 

The spirit of the Spanish patriots continues unbroken and is every 
where in full activity excepting only where it is contrould by the im- 
mediate presence of the superior force of the French. The gigantic 
efforts called forth for the subjugation of that country leave however 
no room to doubt of the final issue of the sanguinary conflict. Still 
the world will learn how much more difficult it is to subdue a people 
than to conquer a vicious government. Troops, provisions and money 
pour in a constant current into that devoted country and leave France 
exhausted and impov[er]ished for the support of a most odious and 
inglorious cause. 

The vessels at Bayonne which have not been taken into the service 
of the Government or otherwise disposed of are to be sold at public 
auction on the 15th of this month. 

The compromised vessels for which I asked permission two months 
since to leave the ports of France are still detained. A conversation I 
have lately had with the minister of foreign relations with regard to 
them leaves no cause to expect that any general measure will be taken 
in their favour. He intimated however that if I would ask for them 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 6l 

seperately I should probably meet with success. As it was however 
the principle rather than the property for which I contended I cannot 
persuade myself to impliedly abandon the former by pursuing the un- 
dignified course he has suggested. I shall do however all I can to aid 
the individuals concerned as far as may appear to me to be com- 
patible with national honour. 

The free and negligent manner in which this letter is written will 
be sufficient to advise you that it is private and confidential. 

I remain 

faithfully and respectfully 
Sir 

Your very Hble Servt 

Jona[than] RuSSEIvL. 
Deer 5th 

P. S. I have this moment learnt that Sweden has acceded to the 
demand of France — declared war against England and that the seques- 
tration of all colonial produce will follow. 

A schooner has just arrived at Bordeaux direct from Baltimore — 
called the Friendship. I know not how she will be received. I know 
however of no circumstance attending her voyage which can bring 
her within the Berlin and Milan decrees even if they be not rescinded. 
One thing however this case will ascertain viz. if colonial produce will 
be permitted in American vessels without a special permit or licence 
and I have reason to believe that it will not be so admitted. 
The Honble Robert Smith 

Secry of State of the United States. 

XII. Joel Barlow to James Monroe.* 

(Despatches, France, Volume 13, Despatcli No. 9.) 

Paris March 15th 1812 
Sir. 

It seems that the Emperor never kept his Ministers so hard at 
work night and day as he has for a month or two past to organize and 
push forward the unexampled military force, before which Europe 
now trembles to her center, and to combine change and shuffle the 
diplomatic discussions which forebode a new and forced arrangement 
of her political powers. I mention this only as it efifects [sic] our own 
affairs, and as it accounts for their delay. 



*T'his despatch is printed in extract in American State Papers, foreign Re- 
lations, III, 519. The printed parts are here inclosed in brackets. At the head 
of the letter is written in pencil, " Are the Extracts from this Letter such as the 
President approves — "' 



62 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 



[I have scarcely been able to get an interview with the Duke of 
Bassano for the last fifteen days, though he has appointed several. — 
He has disappointed me in most of them, and I am sure with reluctance. 
Last evening I obtained a short audience, in which he declared that 
his great work of this continent was now finished, and he would be able 
after tomorrow to devote himself very much to the treaty with the 
United States, till it should be completed, and I left him rather with 
the hope than the full expectation, that he will have it in his power 
to keep his promise.] 

I have not yet repented, though I cannot be sure I shall not repent, 
having detained the Hornet. Besides my reasons mentioned in my 
letters of the 28 January, the 8th feby. and 3d of march, it seemed 
that the presence of a public ship waiting only for the result of the 
negotiation might stimulate them to hasten that result and it would 
give me a double right to urge it. I am sensible that such a delay 
should have its limits, and I certainly will not suffer it to continue much 
longer. Indeed the departure of the Emperor will soon put an end to 
the detention of the ship if nothing else should do it. It is under- 
stood that he leaves Paris early in April to go and regulate Europe 
once more. — 

It is doubtless impossible to penetrate his plan. The following 
string of conjectures is the most plausible, that I am able to give you, 
and some of them are supported by known facts. All the troops in 
Italy, Dalmatia and Istria, to be joined by the great contingent of 
Bavaria, are forming an army of 80,000 to 100,000 under Prince 
Eugene, ready to act upon the lower Danube or elsewhere for the pur- 
pose hereinafter mentioned. — 

Three other principal armies are now forming and marching under 
Davost,* Ney and Mortier. These are composed of about 250,000 f rench 
and Dutch and about 150,000 of the contingencies of Baden, Wertem- 
bourg, Hesse, Westphalia, Saxony, Poland, and Prussia. In these 
three armies are included one hundred and twenty thousand horse. — 

To enable him to carry his regular troops out of France with safety 
he has made another Senatus Consultum throwing all the male force 
of France, not now in the army, into three clases of national guards, 
the first class to include all unmarried men from 20 to 26 years of age, 
the second takes all from 26 to 40 — the third from 40 to 60. The first 
of these is put immediately into activity of service, not however to be 
moved out of France, but doing the necessary duty within it, will enable 
him to withdraw all his regulars including the conscription of this year. 

*Davout. 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 63 

These armies are better provided, better organized, and are said 
'to be better conducted than any that France has before sent abroad. 
The most authentic accounts of their total numbers vary from five to 
600,000 men. Doubtless no such force has ever moved before at any 
one time in the service of any one Prince. Such are the means, now 
for the object. — 

A few days ago in ordering the Council of State to prepare the 
Senatus Consultum for the national guards he prefaced the demand 
with these observations, " Some of the powers of Europe have not 
fulfilled their promise with respect to the continental system. I must 
force them to it. I love peace and tranquility, and I have done enough 
to deserve them. I even confess that I love pleasure. But when the 
interests of the nation calls [sic] I must relinquish them. I am going 
to put myself at the head of an immense military force. It will be a 
war of ten years. The national guards must be organized and put at 
my disposition. I shall not lead them to the end of the world, that is, 
not beyond the Illirian provinces or the present limits of France. But 
they must do the service of the interior and relieve the regular troops." 

When this order was carried to the Senate the Minister in his report 
uttered this remarkable phrase " In whatever port of Europe a British 
ship can enter, there must be a f rench garrison to prevent it." 

Thus far go our facts. From all which and from various appear- 
ances which are indescribable, it is believed that before fighting any 
battles he will invite his brother Alexander, and all others whom it may 
concern, to allow him to garrison all the ports on the Baltic and the 
Gulph of Finland, as far at least as Revel. If this prayer is refused 
he will fight them until it is granted ; and in this crisis of the War 
Prince Eugene will march to the lower Danube to strike the Russian 
force in that quarter, and raise a little debt of gratitude upon the 
Turks, to be paid by and by. 

As soon as this Russian War of one campaign is finished, or sooner 
if his first proposal is granted without a war, it will be agreed that he 
shall form a large round Kingdom of Poland, including Pomerania, 
Baltic Prussia and perhaps the coast as far as Riga. Then he is to 
compensate Alexander with the Turkish provinces north of the mouths 
of the Danube, gratify his father Francis with the Deltas of the Danube 
and the provinces south of it as far as the entrance of the Bosphorus ; 
and setting down himself on the throne of Constantine, declare the 
natural boundaries of France to be the Hellispont and the Egean, ex- 
tending its northern line in that quarter from the Southern bend of the 



64 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

Black Sea to the northern Hmit of Istria, and tossing the turban out 
of Europe, — 

I have the honor to he 

Sir with .great respect 
Yr. Obt. St. 

J. Barlow 
Hon : James Monroe. 

XIII. JoEiv Barlow to the Duke of Bassano.* 

(Despatches, France, Volume 13, Despatch No. 11, Enclosure.) 

Copy 

I May 1812. 
Sir, 

[In the note I had the honor to address to Your Excellency on 
the loth. of November last, the spirit of the English Goveirnment was 
so far noticed as to anticipate the fact now proved by Experience that 
its orders in Council, violating the rights of neutrals, would not be 
revoked. The Declaration of the Prince-Regent, of the 21st. of April, 
has placed that fact beyond all question. In doing this he has repeated 
the assertion so often advanced by his ministers and Judges that the 
Decrees of France of a similar Character are likewise unrevoked. 

You will notice that he finds a new argument for this conclusion 
in Your Excellency's late Report to the Emperor concerning neutral 
rights, in which you avoid taking notice of any repeal or modification 
of these Decrees, or of their non-application to the United States. We 
know indeed that they do not apply to the United States, because we 
do not suffer our flag to be denationalized, in the manner evidently 
contemplated by the Emperor in the rule he meant to establish. But 
it would have been well if Your Excellency had noticed their non- 
application to the United States, since his Majesty has uniformly done 
it in his decisions of Prize causes, since November 1810.] You would 
then have taken away the ground on which the Prince Regent has 
built his declaration ; and this would have forced his ministers to find 
another pretext which must have been less plausible in the view of the 
People of England, and less calculated to embarass the american Gov- 
ernment, in arming the Nation against the invaders of her rights. 

[It is much to be desired that the french Government would now 
make and publish an authentic act, declaring the Berlin and Milan 



*This letter is printed in extract in American State Papers, Foreign Rela- 
tions, III, 602. The printed parts are here inclosed in brackets. 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 65 

Decrees, as relative to the United States, to have ceased in November 
1810, declaring that the}- have not been applied in any instance since 
that time, and that they shall not be so applied in future.] 

There are three substantial reasons which induce me now to pro- 
pose this measure, and I beg leave to lay them before you with a solici- 
tude commanded by their importance. 

1st. It would greatly embarass the British Government in its 
measures of injustice; and since the Regent has decided not to repeal 
the orders in Council, which is now demonstrated, it would force his 
Ministers to take a less popular pretext for going to war with America ; 
it would bring the manufacturing towns upon them with such loud 
Complaints as might induce other changes which cannot easily be cal- 
culated. 

2d, Such an act on the part of France is absolutely necessary 
to the american Government; and tho' solicited as an accomodation, 
it may be demanded as a Right. That Government is now entering 
upon the most solemn and eventful scene of things that can present 
itself to a nation in the course of its existence, an appeal to arms — 
against an agressor far more powerful than itself. It is a war that 
requires the collected exertions of all our strength, a war that ought 
not be begun and cannot be successfully conducted, without that degree 
of unanimity among the People which can only rise from a universal 
sentiment of right. In this case it is not sufficient that the President 
and his Counsellors should see the justice of their cause and the truth 
of their assertions; but the People must see it; the Nation must know 
it. A War in our Country must be the business of the Nation. Tho' 
we do not all fight, we must all know why the fighting is done. The 
man who gives his money and the man who gives his blood will first 
convince himself that the object is worthy of its price. 

Now it is well known to Your Excellency, it is well known to the 
world, for our public Documents are full of it, that great doubts exist 
in that Country, even among our best informed merchants, and in the 
hall itself of Congress whether the Berlin and Milan Decrees are to 
this day repealed, or even modified in regard to the United States. Your 
Report, of the loth. of March, by its unaccountable reserve will aug- 
ment that doubt, and the Prince Regent's Manifesto of the 21st. of 
April, is wisely calculated to confirm it in the minds of thousands of 
our influencial men. The Manifesto was made for that purpose, as well 
as for misleading the People of England ; and the effect will be very 
great in both Countries, if not immediately met and destroyed by a 
more potent Declaration of the Imperial Government; more potent. 



66 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

because it will be founded in truth, and will be only the fulfilment of 
its own promise. It would produce a perfect unanimity in America, 
while it would put the Prince Regent completely in the wrong, in the 
view of his own people, and thereby paralyze the exertions of his 
ministers. 

3d. I will ask Your Excellency whether the Emperor does not 
owe it to his own Dignity and the reputation of his Government, to re- 
move all doubt and silence every tongue, as to the revocation of these 
Decrees. Why should he leave it in the power of artful men to assert, 
and of credulous men to believe that he has not performed his word? 
The revocation of these Decrees, as they regard the United States, is an 
article of mutual convention, a solemn Contract between him and them. 
For this they gave an equivalent, an expensive equivalent; they con- 
sented to deprive themselves of the English Commerce: a sacrifice 
which they have made in the face of the world, public and palpable, by 
a legislative act, by an executive proclamation, by punishing all infrac- 
tions, and now by raising a hundred thousand troops to cope with the 
second power in the universe, irritated to madness by the honest execu- 
tion, on our part, of that sacred Convention with France. 

If it was the Duty of France to cease to apply those Decrees to the 
United States, it is equally her duty to promulgate it to the world in 
as formal a manner as we have promulgated our Law for the exclusion 
of British merchandize. She ought to declare and publish the non- 
application of these Decrees in the same forms in which she enacted 
the Decrees. The President has instructed me to propose and press this 
object with that frank, but friendly firmness with which a conscious- 
ness of right, on the one side, and of obligation on the other, demands 
in any Case the fulfilment of a Treaty. And the interests of the two 
Parties are here so manifestly the same as to forbid the fear of giving 
offence, if I present the argument without disguise. 

The ground to be taken for the Declaration I demand is plain. 
The State of things is very different now from what it was in August 
1810, when the letter of your predecessor announced the revocation. 
He then added a condition subsequent, the execution of the act of Con- 
gress on which the revocation was predicated. That Condition is com- 
pletely performed on our part; the revocation should therefore be de- 
clared absolute, — unclogged with conditions and unshaded with Doubts, 
as to the past, the present and the future, 

[The Case is so simple, the Demand so just and the necessity so 
urgent, that I cannot withold my confidence in the prompt and complete 
success of my proposition.] 



L.ofC. 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 67 

The Union of interests between the two Countries and the pressure 
of the present Crisis induce me to add another proposition, which I do 
with an equal hope of success. [The Declaration I solicit, tho' im- 
portant in itself, should not be sent to the United States alone. It ought 
to be accompanied with two other acts of equal or superior moment. 
These are a Convention of Indemnity for past spoliations of american 
Property, in violation of our neutral rights, and a Treaty of Com- 
merce founded on the liberal principle of reciprocal benefit and con- 
cession, which I have understood from Your Excellency that His 
Majesty is ready to subscribe.] 

These three public Documents, against either of which I presume 
there is no objection, arriving together in the United States, would 
produce a great and salutary sensation ; and it is with confidence that 
I assure Your Excellency of my firm belief that His Majesty's Empire 
would be as widely and solidly benefitted by these arrangements as the 
Country in whose name I have the honor to speak. 

A Corvette of the United States, a very fast sailor, is now waiting 
at Cherbourg for my dispatches. If these arrangements could be com- 
pleted within a few days, to be carried by that ship, they would prob- 
ably arrive at Washington, as soon as the Declaration of the British 
Government, <a. piece most artfully calculated for that Country, for 
which it is evidently contrived and critically timed. Left to take its 
Course in America, without its antidote, it will produce a most dele- 
terious effect : but being confronted by the Documents here proposed, 
it will return to its native Cabinet, with the contempt of an insulted 
nation, and cover its authors with confusion. 

Accept the assurances of my high Consideration. 

J. Barlow 
To his Exy. the Duke of Bassano. 

XIV. Joseph Eve to Daniel Webster. 

(Despatches, Texas, Volume i.) 

Legation of the United States 

Galveston March loth 1842 
The Honle. 

Daniel Webster Secretary of State 
Of the United States 
Sir 

The Congress of Texas having adjourned on the Sixth of Febuary 
and the President and Secretary of State as well as the Secretary of the 
Treasuary having left Austin, I left there on the ninth of Febuary, 
and arrived in Galvaston on the 15th. The President and Secretary of 



68 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 



State are in Galvaston and are now engaged in issuing Orders to have 
the miHtia equipt and ready to march to any point and at any moment. 
News has reached here to day by express that Sanantonia, about three 
hundred miles South West from Galvaston has been taken by the 
Mexican Army supposed to be twenty thousand strong. It is believed 
here that Corpus Christi seventy miles below here has fallen into the 
bands of the Mexicans, and great fears are entertained that they are 
in Austin before this time 

It has been rumoured here for the last ten days, that the Mexicans 
were coming in great force. But the President did not believe the re- 
port, I however on yesterday addressed a letter to him, requesting to 
be informed whither he intended to remove the Archives of this Gov- 
ernment from Austin a copy of which I herewith enclose for your 
inspection; I have received no written Answer from the President as 
he has been much engaged but in a conversation with him this evening 
he informed me that he had given orders to have all the Archives re- 
moved forthwith. I have therefore considered it to be my duty to have 
the Archives of the United States belonging to this Legation removed ; 
As the people here believe that the Mexicans will not respect the flag of 
the United States in Texas ; I cannot myself entertain the least fears 
either for the Archives or for myself, or family. 

I consider this Government in a most deplorable condition, with- 
out a dollar in the Treasuary and without credit to borrow money here 
or abroad with not a regular Soldier belonging to the Army, and a 
very great excitement against the President for not having ordered out 
the militia previous to this time, large meetings have been gotten up 
in most of the counties resolutions adopted and commitees apointed to 
wait on him with a request that he would have the militia organized, 
equipted and officers appointed with orders to be in readiness to march 
at a moments warning ; The President not believing the rumours untill 
the express arived to day refused to do so ; the people in almost every 
county have organized, armed and equipt themselves by voluntarily 
contribution and about two thousand are on their march to Sanantonia. 
At least two hundred Volunteers will leave this city tomorrow at their 
own expence it is said that the President has issued orders that no 
citizen is to leave this Island as he anticipates great danger of an attact 
upon Galvaston; but the Volunteers will disregard the order. The 
district court was in session here but has adjourned this evening and 
the Judge with every member of the bar except one has volunteered, 
and will leave here for the Army tomorrow. I have never seen so much 
enthusiasm among any people all seem to be anxious to meet the foe, 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 69 

and all seem to think that if they can embody five thousand Texians, 
they can defeat twenty thousand Mexicans. Genrl. Arista commands 
the invading Mexican Army, and has issued a conciliatory and im- 
posing proclemation, it will however have but little effect upon the 
Texians 

Since my arival at this place from Austin, the Merchants and 
traders, from the United States, have expressed great dissatisfaction 
at the advantages given by this Government to the commerce of France, 
over that of the United States. On the 27th of Febuary I addressed a 
note to Doctor Jones Secretary of State for Texas ; on that subject a 
copy of which as well as Mr. Jones answer I have the honor herewith 
to enclose to you. With sentiments of high regard 
I have the honor to be 

Your Obt. Servt. 

Joseph Eve. 



XV. A. J. DoNELSON TO John C. Calhoun. 
(Despatches, Texas, Volume 2, Despatch No. 3.) 

Washington Texas 

Novr. 24t. 1844 
Honble J. C. Calhoun Secy of State of the U States 
Sir, 

I have the pleasure to state to you that President Houston reached 
this place last night ; and favored me with an interview in less than 
fifteen minutes after his arrival. 

In order that you may see the character of his views, I will give 
you a narrative of our conversation, very much in the order in wbich 
the topics arose, and were disposed of. 

Adverting to the situation of Texas he dwelt with satisfaction on 
his success in defeating the schemes of many adventurers, who had 
found their way into Congress and other Departments of the Govern- 
ment: and declared that if he had not been disturbed by the Texan 
artifices [ ?] (alluding to those who furnished evidence of the desire of 
the people for annexation) he would have accomplished the measure 
himself. His idea was, that, England and Mexico encouraged by the 
hope of defeating the policy of the United States — and, the United 
States alarmed, in their turn, by the fear of English intrigue — gave 
him a lever on the question which it was his intention to use, so as to 
restore Texas to our Union, whenever he found it practicable. He 
denounced, in his peculiar manner, those who forced him to abandon 



yo DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

his policy, and shew his hand before it could be played with success. 
He blamed Messrs Henderson and Vanzant for signing the Treaty 
without obtaining a fuller guarantee from the Executive of the United 
States to defend Texas, should the proposition for annexation provoke 
a renewal of hostilities on the part of Mexico, or otherwise expose 
her to injury. 

I told him in reply that so far as the Executive of the United States 
was concerned there had been, and was, every disposition to befriend 
Texas, and even to defend her in the manner suggested, but that he 
was aware of his limited powers, and of the consequences which would 
have resulted from a disagreement between him and Congress in the 
exercise of an act which might have been deemed warlike. The execu- 
tive, with no Congress to sustain him, would necessarily have failed, 
and thus the cause of annexation would have received a prejudice far 
greater than it did from the course adopted. I also brought to his 
recollection that the remedy for all such cases in the United States 
was in an appeal to the people — that this appeal had been made, and the 
issue of the Presidential election just closed, if favorable to Mr Polk, 
would prove that the course of Mr Tyler in regard to the policy of 
annexation had the popular sanction. 

He said, that he was far from censuring President Tyler or his 
cabinet — that he accorded to Mr Tyler all praise for his patriotism 
and vigilance; and that he requested me to say to him in his judgment, 
of all the Presidents since Mr Jeffersons day, he was the only one to be 
compared with Genl Jackson ; and further whatever might be the fate 
of Texas, in, or out, of the Union, her people would soon be rich, and 
that they would erect a monument which would perpetuate their grati- 
tude to Mr Tyler. 

I returned him my thanks for these generous and noble sentiments, 
and hailed them as evidence that the cause of annexation was still dear 
to the hearts of the brave people he had so signally served ; and further 
remarked that I trusted nothing had been done to commit Texas to a 
policy inconsistent with the speedy consummation of the measure. That 
from the open avowal Genl Terrill had made of opposition to the policy 
of the United States on this subject, and from the concurrence in such 
sentiments generally manifested by the subordinate officers of his Gov- 
ernment, I had been led to fear some line of conduct had been adopted 
which would render the contest in the United States abortive. 

He replied that he was not in the habit of committing himself — 
that "leaky vessels would not hold water long" — that he had much to 
say on this subject (here some of his friends were present). As soon 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 7 1 

as they retired he insisted on my remaining with him. I did so. He 
then resumed the conversation by observing, that he could conceal 
nothing from me, acquainted as I was with his trials and sufferings 
thro life, and coming as I did from the Hermitage. 

I replied to this, that Genl Jackson was still alive, and took an 
interest in his conduct, at this critical period, which he could imagine 
much better than I could express it — that he looked upon the annexa- 
tion of Texas as the great question of the day, as having a greater in- 
fluence on the affairs of this continent than any that had occurred since 
the Revolution; and he was anxious that his friend Houston whom 
Providence had made the prominent actor in it thus far, should main- 
tain his elevated position to the close, and show that he comprehended 
the results which were to flow from its influence on the fate of free 
institutions — that he feared the path of his duty might be obscured 
by the arguments which would be adduced in favor of the seperate 
existence of the Republic, and by the plausibility which would be given 
to the idea of making Texas a nucleus for the formation of new states, 
extending to the Pacific, affording a refuge for the oppressed of all 
nations, and rivalling the United States — that yielding to such a pros- 
pect, so tempting to ambition, and so natural to the spirit of adventure 
already too much aroused by the course pursued by Mexico and the 
United States in postponing so long the settlement of their boundaries, 
Genl Jackson, feared his friend might overlook what was due to the 
more sober injunctions of wisdom and experience. 

No — No — ^No — was the reply. Tell Genl Jackson that his coun- 
sels influence my spirit — that his words are treasures — that the young 
sergeant who profitted so much by his advice in his early career has 
only learned to value that advice the more as time and adversity have 
strengthened his faculties. Tell him that Saml Houston though dis- 
tant from him in the wilderness, and abandoned to the chances of a 
merciless contest with Mexicans and savages, has not lost sight of the 
measure of annexation. He continued to remark in reference to the 
fear expressed concerning the purport of the instructions given to 
Genl Terrill, that I might dismiss it. He said it was true he, Rily, and 
a few others were opposed to annexation, but that this was no indica- 
tion of the course of the Government — that Genl Terrill was not author- 
ised to conclude a Treaty — that he had sent him to England and France 
to see what bids they would make, what boot they would give — that 
he was not authorised to commit the Government, and power, to do 
so, would not be given to him. 

I told President Houston here, that I was truly gratified at this 



72 DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 

frank declaration of his views and sentiments and more than happy 
to find them so favorable to annexation — that as soon as my credentials 
were received I would take pleasure in laying before him the views 
of my Government on that great question; and that I trusted he 
would not take ground on that part of the topics of his valedictory 
message, until I had an opportunity also of exhibiting to him the aspect 
of the opinion now existing in the United States on the subject — that 
I felt sure when he came to reflect on the views of my Government he 
would find them so reasonable and just as to command his respect and 
support. 

To this he replied that he was glad the U S Government had 
made me the organ of their views ; and that he would be proud to see 
annexation accomplished during my connection with the Government — 
that the Secretary of State was expected tomorrow, but if he did not 
arrive he would give a temporary appointment to some one else to 
hasten my official presentation. 

I remained with the President nearly all night, there being noth- 
ing but a door to seperate our apartments, which are open log cabins. 
He was unreserved and cordial, and as far as I can form an opinion, 
determined to adhere to the idea of annexation as long as there is a 
hope of effecting it on terms of honor and justice to his Republic. 

It is, perhaps, due to the President that I should not omit to state, 
that, in the course of our free and general range over the many topics 
suggested ,by the examination of the relations of the two Republics; 
among which, suggested iby myself, was the prominence that annexa- 
tion would assign to him as a citizen of the United States, he uni- 
formly repelled the idea of personal political views. He declared it to 
be his intention to retire to his plantation on the Trinity river and 
devote the remainder of his life to the pursuits of agriculture and the 
education of his son. He said no inducement should tempt him from 
this retirement after the establishment of the independence of the Re- 
public — that his ambition was satisfied — he had made no money and 
had no means of support except what would arise from the improve- 
ment of his lands — yet he hoped to have enough to pay the expenses 
of a pilgrimage to the Hermitage next spring, after which he would 
bid adieu to all other expectations save those which would centre around 
his own domicil. 

This frame of mind, seeming to me to harmonize with a calcula- 
tion of interest dependent upon annexation, is worthy of notice as an 
interpreter of his policy, perhaps as reliable as any of the expressions 
referred to. The stability which would follow the extension of the laws 



DIPLOMATIC ARCHIVES OF DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 73 

of the United States over this Republic, having the power which our 
flag would have to hanish all apprehension of invasion or disorder, 
foreign or domestic, would at once raise the value of these lands, and 
in many other respects increase the wealth and population of the coun- 
try — a consequence which must be seen by President Houston. 

I have, thus. Sir, laid before you a random view of my first con- 
versation with the President, at the risk of fatiguing you with details 
which ought not to have a place in a public document. In my next 
dispatch I shall give you what passes at my presentation, and endeavor 
to possess something in an official form which will be more pointed 
and explicit. 

In the mean time I have the honor to be with great respect 

Your obt servant 

A J DONEIvSON 



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